Just in time for Easter, a Eugene author this weekend will unveil his new book arguing that Jesus did not hail from Nazareth — because Nazareth did not exist during Jesus’ lifetime. Rene Salm will talk about his book, “The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus,” at the American Atheists’ national conference in Minneapolis. He also will rub shoulders there with the likes of Richard Dawkins, author of the best-selling ode to atheism, “The God Delusion.”
But Salm, a 55-year-old mental health worker and published composer of classical music, insists he’s not anti-Christian — pointing to the framed drawing of Jesus and many books on Christianity that adorn his home library as evidence.
“I do consider myself an atheist but I am not anti-religion,” said Salm, who is also a longtime student of Buddhism. “I am a very spiritual person.”
Salm has spent the past eight years researching his book, a 375-page work that is carefully indexed and footnoted. Working intensively at the University of Oregon Knight Library and its lending library, Salm said he has scoured almost all of the archaeological and other relevant records relating to the biblical community of Nazareth. He said he hired a Hebrew translator to help him make sense of one document, and contacted another researcher who lives in France.
But what does it matter where Jesus actually lived? “It’s the domino effect,” said Salm. “If Nazareth goes, then a whole lot of other so-called facts about Jesus also go out the window.”
Salm said he suspects early Christian evangelists insisted that Jesus came from Nazareth because the “inerrant” Bible said he did, and because they wished to promote the idea of Jesus as a divine savior.
Salm said it’s more likely Jesus grew up in Judea, where belief in human divinity did not exist. Such a belief “was very non-Jewish, even heresy,” he said.
Salm rests his case on two main points: All the tombs that have been found in and around Nazareth date no further back than A.D. 50, and all the oil lamps date from between A.D. 25 and A.D. 135.
“Nazareth appears to have begun about 70 years after the life of Jesus,” he said. “Before then, there is no evidence for Nazareth.”
For more than 100 years, scholars have debated such aspects of the Gospels as the Resurrection, virgin birth and Jesus’ miracles, Salm said. “But those all boil down to my opinion vs. your opinion,” he said. “This you can arguably prove. This is based on digging in the ground.”
Salm concedes he does not have the academic credentials — doctoral degree, university teaching post or peer-reviewed journal articles — that would lend weight to his research.
“If I can get the attention of scholars, I could have a radical impact,” he said. “All the people who have lampooned (my book) have, to a person, not read it.”
Salm said the book’s topic “fell into my lap” about 10 years ago when he was discussing it with other scholars online. “My first reaction was, this is kooky,” he said. He decided to explore the topic at the UO library, figuring he could disprove the claim within an hour.
“Instead I found an 1899 encyclopedia that said it was ‘very doubtful’ that Jesus came from Nazareth.”
Salm grew up in Beirut, where his father worked for the U.S. Embassy, but moved to Eugene in time for his senior year in high school. A spiritual experience in the woods at age 21, he said, has guided his lifelong passion in Christian and Buddhist studies.
“I’m looking for understanding, I’m looking for the facts,” he said. “It’s not so important to me what the facts are as much as they are true.”