The Nazareth argument is one put forward by mythicists. It goes that town of Nazareth did not exist at the time of Jesus, and this implies that Jesus of Nazareth did not exist either. The first assertion that Nazareth did not exist at the time of Jesus is the most widely discussed part of the argument. We need to be careful about the opposing positions because as usual both sides are inclined to make straw man arguments to attack their opponents. The historicist position on Nazareth does not require that it was at any specific location, though it's obviously easiest to extrapolate from the location of the current Nazareth backwards in time. It does, however, require that wherever it was, it was called Nazareth at the time of Jesus. The mythicist position holds that at the time of Jesus there was no way called Nazareth. To maintain this position, they need to explain the origin of the current town of Nazareth, but they do not need to establish that there was no settlement in the area in Jesus' time, just that it was not called Nazareth then. The two lines of relevant evidence are the historical record and archaeology. Dealing first with the historical record, there is no mention of Nazareth from any non-Christian sources before the 3rd or 4th centuries AD. This includes the Old Testament, all of the New Testament apart from the Gospels and Acts, no Seifers, the Jewish Talmud and all other ancient writers. This 3rd or 4th century reference is from the so-called Caesaria Nazareth fragment found in 1962. Before it was found, the earliest known non-Christian reference to Nazareth was by the 8th or 9th century Jewish liturgical poet, Eliezer Haq Aliah, in his lamentation for the 9th of Ab. The lamentation consists of 24 verses, one each on 24 priestly courses or families. The verses refer to their names, where they lived and various other details mainly on their faithlessness and the catastrophes that resulted from it. The 19th century rabbi, Yehuda Shalom-o-Rapaport, noticed that the lamentation was based on a list of priestly courses of the 2nd Temple period and where the priestly courses lived. Jewish Colossennial Klein developed a theory of the meaning and origin of liturgical poems, including the lamentation. The lists of priestly families and where they lived must have been drawn up after the 70 AD destruction of the Temple and probably after the final defeat of Bar-Cocca in 135 AD, because it is only then that the Jews were scattered beyond Judea and settled in Galilee. The list was made to preserve the identities and Judean origins of the priestly families in the belief that the Temple would soon be rebuilt and the families returned to Jerusalem. Also, the priestly course that reads the scriptures in the synagogue cycled throughout the year, so that such lists may have been used to direct the cycle of worship. So if Klein was right, Haqali as mentioned of Nazareth in lamentation means it existed in the mid-2nd century AD. Klein avid that this list was inscribed in synagogues and he tried to reconstruct the synagogue inscription based on several sources including the Ascolon fragment. In about 1920 a piece of stone bearing an inscription was discovered in Ascolon. The text is more complete but similar to the Caesaria fragment B found in 1962. It implies the existence of a priestly list possibly mounted in synagogues. Also there is a passage in the Jerusalem Talmud that appears to be taken from such a list. Then there is the lamentation and one other poem by Haqaliah, and a cache called the Cairo Genes and Manuscripts which include further liturgical poems. Klein published his reconstruction of the list in 1939. He also identified the site in Caesaria where he thought a second century synagogue had stood. Klein's list had the word Nazareth on its 18th line but for all Klein's skill this was still a theoretical and somewhat tenuous assertion. Hence the importance from a Christian perspective of finding a piece of this inscribed list containing the words Nazareth. Israeli archaeologist Professor Avi Yona directed digs at the Caesaria synagogue site in 1956 and 1962. In 1958 a photograph of a piece of marble slab found on the surface at Caesaria was published. The fragment itself was lost and has never reappeared. This piece, born in description that appeared to be part of Klein's list. This find came to be called fragment C. At the 1962 dig two pieces of marble bearing inscriptions were found, dubbed Caesaria fragments A and B. Fragment A contained the word Nazareth. Avi Yona associated these fragments with a synagogue wall plaque in scribe with Klein's putative list. Here is his reconstruction. Comparing Klein's reconstruction with the Caesaria fragments, Fragment A covers four lines and it is an exact match. So Fragment A proved that Klein's putative list was unkennally accurate and that Nazareth existed in the mid-second century AD. The most complete example of the list of priestly courses was found in the 1970s on a column in Bait Al-Hadja in Yemen. The differences between that list and Klein's list are numerous and in some cases substantial. With that in mind the perfect match with the Caesarian inscription is impressive, perhaps too impressive. Italian scholar Enrico Tucciinardi published a paper in 2010 questioning the authenticity of this find. His article was transcribed into English by René Salm, author of the book The Myth of Nazareth. This is what Tucciinardi found. Such an important discovery would normally appear in a high impact archaeological journal. But instead it appeared in the teacher's yoke, a minor parochial publication from Bailor University, a private Christian school in Waco, Texas. This was edited by Professor Jerry Vardeman who wrote an introduction to the article in which he explains that he himself had discovered Fragment A. Jerry Vardeman was an ordained Baptist minister and professor of biblical archaeology out southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary at Fort Worth in Texas. The institution that part funded both the 1956 and 1962 digs. Vardeman believed in the literal truth of the Bible and was keen to find evidence for the existence of Nazareth. Furthermore he was aware of Klein's work. The 1958 photograph indicated the likely presence of a synagogue list. Vardeman suspected that this list could contain proof of an early date for Nazareth. This probably prompted southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary to fund the 1962 dig at which Vardeman was present for two months. Vardeman supervised the dig in the area where Fragment A was found on August 14, 1962. It was found in waste soil before it was carted to the dump rather than being identified during excavation. The wheelbarrow man was specifically instructed to look for artifacts in the discarded soil and Julie found it. The significance of the word Nazareth was recognised at once. Vardeman had been due to stay on site for a further week but left on the day of the find. Vardeman's archaeological credibility was later damaged by his involvement in the laughable micro letters Fiasco. He attempted to reconcile the dates of birth of Jesus from Luke and from Matthew. Luke takes the birth to coincide with the census of Quirinius which occurred in 6 AD. Matthew dates it during the reign of Herod who died in 4 BC. Vardeman wanted to show that Jesus was born in 12 BC after an earlier census by Quirinius. Vardeman claimed that he had discovered Roman coins in the British Museum on which were written letters so small they could only be read with magnification. They refer to Jesus and from them he inferred that Jesus was born in 12 BC. Among the many reasons for dismissing this claim are that the micro letters simply are not on the coins. That such letters could not have been stamped with first century technology and that even if they had been the coin details were worn off. Further the coin text was in Greek but the letters were in Latin and included the letters J and W. They were not part of ancient Latin. So that's one side of the story. An argument countering Tuchinari's analysis has yet to appear but the situation is suspicious. Vardeman had the motive, means, opportunity and maybe the inclination to perpetrate a forgery. It seems credible that the possibility of finding a fragment bearing the word Nazareth was what motivated the funding of the 1962 excavation. Furthermore, with the fragment C photograph and clients list in hand it would be a simple match to forge fragment A. It is possible that as the 1962 dig drew to an end without finding the evidence Vardeman was looking for he had the piece forge using clients' text. It would of course be far easier to plant the forgery in way soil and have it discovered from there than to plant it in the ground. Furthermore you will note that we cannot place the finding of fragment C entirely above suspicion either, though this does not seem to have involved Vardeman. On the other hand if it was a forgery it wasn't a very good one. In this picture produced by Tuchinari we can see the three fragments. We have no scale for fragment C because only a photograph exists and that has no scale information on it. Nevertheless neither of the other fragments are a good match for the character spacing to height ratio of fragment C. They're not a great match to each other either but this is more uncertain as fragment B contains so little text. If fragment A is genuine then it does imply that Jews settled in a place called Nazareth around 140 AD and if so this was probably the Nazareth that we know today. If fragment A is a forgery then the same implication can still be drawn from clients list but it would be much more tenuous coming as it does from one word in a liturgical poem dating from 600 years or so after the event. In the next video we'll take a look at some of the archaeological evidence.