| Inauguro questa sezione pubblicando un estratto sulle testimonianze letterarie su Nazareth dal libro di Christians and the Holy Places: The Myth of Jewish-Christian Origins di J. E. Taylor. L'estratto è un po' lungo, ma merita di essere letto perché getta luce sulle citazioni patristiche e la consapevolezza dei padri della chiesa della collocazione geografica e delle caratteristiche demografiche di Nazareth. Se avete problemi con la traduzione, chiedete pure (I libri di valore sul cristianesimo primitivo non sono mai stati tradotti in lingua italiana. Anche quando il mercato offre la traduzione italiana, visto il livello dei traduttori, è buona cosa confrontarli sempre con la versione in lingua originale).
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Byzantine Nazareth in Literary Sources in Joan E. Taylor, Christians and the Holy Places: The Myth of Jewish-Christian Origins, Clarendon Press, 1993, pp. 226-230.
Eusebius mentions Nazareth in his Onomasticon (138. 24-140. 2) but notes nothing of interest about the place, only that Christ was given the name 'Nazarene' because of his coming from here, and that members of the Church were 'once Nazarenes but now Christians'. Bagatti's conclusion that this implies a distinction between the Jewish-Christian 'Nazarenes' (or 'Nazoraeans') and the Nazarenes of the ancient Church is strained. The Bordeaux Pilgrim bypassed Nazareth, which certainly does suggest that there was nothing to be visited in the town. Unlike the Christian visitors who had preceded them, pilgrims were not scholarly tourists undertaking travel for the purposes of historic interest; Christian pilgrims went to specific places in order to recollect a meaningful event which apparently took place there and to pray. If there was nowhere for them to pray, and no specific place identified as the site of a biblical event worthy of contemplation or affording inspiration, then there was not a strong incentive for them to visit the town. In 373 Melania the Elder hastened to bring alms to Christians who had been exiled from Egypt to Sepphoris, but she did not visit Nazareth, which tends to suggest there were few Christians there to sustain. 16
The first person to mention that a Christian shrine existed in Nazareth was Egeria, c. 383. Her words, recorded in the text of Peter the Deacon, describe a garden, a cave, and an altar: 'In Nazareth is a garden in which the Lord used to be after his return from Egypt' ( Pet. Diac. Lib. P4), and 'there is a big and very splendid cave in which she (that is, Holy Mary) lived. An altar has been placed there' ( Pet. Diac. Lib. T). 17 One may wonder, at this stage, if there was not some small structure connected with the
cave; a consideration that should be borne in mind when looking at the archaeological evidence. Who might have constructed this Christian shrine?
As we have already seen, Epiphanius' Panarion, written c. 375-7, gives us an account of the labours of the comes Joseph of Tiberias, a Jew who converted to Christianity, in which it is stated that he received permission from the emperor Constantine to build churches in Jewish strongholds such as Nazareth ( Pan. xxx. 11. 10). Epiphanius proceeds to describe his efforts in Tiberias, where he succeeded in building a little church in part of the (ruined?) Hadrianeum ( Pan. xxx. 12). Moreover, 'in Diocaesarea and also in each of the others he completed buildings' ( Pan. xxx. 12. 9). 18 Joseph succeeded, therefore, in building a structure in Nazareth. Indeed, it would be hard to imagine why Epiphanius would have specifically mentioned the town if Joseph had not built something there. The date of his receiving permission from Constantine must of course have been before 22 May 337, when the emperor died. Epiphanius associates Joseph with two patriarchs named Hillel and Judah. It would appear that Epiphanius got the names of the patriarchs right, but confused their identities in the story; most likely, Joseph was at the deathbed of Judah III (c. 320), and involved with the young Hillel II until the early days of his taking office (cf. Pan. xxx. 10. 9 ff.); he was Patriarch from c. 330 to 365. 19 Joseph was sent by Hillel to Cilicia, where he converted to Christianity, and thereafter visited the emperor's court. On the basis of this literary evidence, one might therefore suggest c. 335 as the date of church construction in Nazareth. This allows Joseph time in Cilicia before his conversion and further time at the court of Constantine. It is also after the date of the Bordeaux Pilgrim's visit.
In his revision of Eusebius' Onomasticon, Jerome does not write of what existed in Nazareth (cf. Lib. loc. 143; Com. Matt. ii. 23), but since he records that Paula visited the town during her pilgrimage, he provides us with some evidence that there was a place, however insubstantial the shrine, where Paula could pray ( Ep. cviii. 13. 5). Theodosius, at the beginning of the sixth century, mentions Nazareth in a list of distances useful for pilgrims ( De Situ iv). All this shows that Nazareth was visited by pilgrims from the late fourth century onwards, even if what was there was not deemed particularly worthy of comment.
However, one might ask why it was that the Jewish population of Nazareth did not tear down the Christian shrine the moment Joseph left the town. It would appear from Epiphanius that he went in and built it without any loud missionary proclamations, despite his apparent idea that building churches in Jewish areas would effect conversions. Perhaps a low-key approach was the very reason why he was successful in his building operations. With some kind of small shrine or church in Nazareth, with perhaps a few caretakers in residence, the Jewish authorities would have felt no serious threat, despite Joseph's probable ambition that Christian pilgrims would influence some Jews to convert.
For the main part, when Christian pilgrims, like Egeria and Paula, started to come to the town, they would have brought with them revenue, which may have been more important to the town than any possible religious danger. The pilgrims' yearning for relics and mementoes could be readily exploited for commercial gain, and, of course, pilgrims needed to eat and buy the necessities of life as well. 20 Pilgrims could be pandered to for the sake of their appreciative 'tourist dollar' and enticed in many ways to part with cash. This situation is made amply clear as regards Nazareth by the report given by the gullible Piacenza Pilgrim of 570:
We travelled on to the city of Nazareth, where many miracles take place. In the synagogue there is kept the book in which the Lord wrote his ABC, and in this synagogue there is the bench on which he sat with the other children. Christians can lift the bench and move it about, but the Jews are completely unable to move it, and cannot drag it outside. The house of St Mary is now a basilica, and her clothes are the cause of frequent miracles.
The Jewesses of that city are better-looking than any other Jewesses in the whole country. They declare that this is St Mary's gift to them, for they also say that she was a relation of theirs. Though there is no love lost between Jews and Christians, these women are full of kindness. ( Piacenza Pilgrim , Itin. v) 21
One can well imagine the mirth of the Jews who yet again demonstrated to the visiting Christians that they could not lift the bench in their synagogue. 22 One can also imagine a bevy of the most beautiful girls in the village idling outside the basilica in order to do kind things for the visitors. 'The donation of funds for pious ends', as David Hunt puts it, 23 was a source of revenue and could be encouraged.
The Piacenza Pilgrim's account seems to imply strongly that the town's population was still Jewish in the sixth century. From him, we also learn that the small structure built by Joseph of Tiberias had been superseded by a basilica. In 614, however, the Persians invaded Palestine from the north. The Jews of Nazareth apparently joined Chosroes II in destroying churches and murdering Christians in Jerusalem. 24 In revenge, the emperor Heraclius reluctantly singled out Nazareth for special punishment. 25 The fact that the men of Nazareth went to fight with the Persians shows that there was no significant Christian presence in the town which they needed to worry about in regard to the safety of their wives and children. 26
At the end of the century, Arculf, whose impressions were recorded by Adomnan, speaks of two large churches; there is no mention of a Jewish population or a synagogue ( De Loc. Sanct. ii. 26). Peter the Deacon ( Lib. T) and the thirteenth-century pilgrim Burchard 27 mention that the synagogue was converted into a church. Again these pieces of literary evidence should be borne in mind when we come to look at the archaeology of Roman and Byzantine Nazareth.
To conclude this survey of literary material, it suffices to say that there is nothing that can be found which definitively points to Jewish-Christian presence in the town much past the first century, or Christian veneration of the place before the fourth. The town was clearly Jewish until the seventh century; whether some of these Jews became Christians after Christian pilgrimage began is not recorded. The sixth-century women of Nazareth certainly played on the pilgrims' expectations that they may have had a family connection with Jesus, as a way of procuring appreciative gifts of money, but there is no reason to think that they were Christian. There is no literary material which would require us to approach the archaeology with any expectation of uncovering Jewish-Christian remains in Nazareth or evidence of pilgrimage to the town prior to the fourth century.
Footnotes
15 ( 1969), 18.
16 Kopp ( 1963), 59.
17 Quoted from Wilkinson ( 1981), 193.
18 τίσι here seems to have the sense of 'each'.
19 Goranson ( 1990), 59-62.
20 Hunt ( 1984), 135-47.
21 Trans. in Wilkinson ( 1977), 79-80.
22 So Kopp ( 1963), 55.
23 ( 1984), 137.
24 Eutychius, Annales22, PG111, 1083.
25 Ibid. 245, PG111, 1090.
26 Kopp ( 1963), 56.
27 See Wilkinson ( 1981), 193.
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