Jesus The Nazarene
Getting a Name
The expression 'Jesus of Nazareth' is actually a bad translation of the original Greek 'Iesous o Nazoraios.' More accurately, we should speak of 'Jesus the Nazarene' ... where Nazarene has a meaning quite unrelated to a place name or a town. But just what is that meaning and how did it get applied to a small village? The highly ambiguous Hebrew root of the name is NZR.
The 2nd century Gnostic Gospel offers this verse:
'The apostles that came before us called him Jesus Nazarene the Christ ..."Nazara" is the "Truth". Therefore 'Nazarene' is "The One of the Truth" ...'
~Gospel of Philip, 47.
What we do know is that 'Nazarene' (or 'Nazorean') was originally the name of an early Jewish-Christian sect – a faction, or off-shoot, of the Essenes (and in Egypt the Theraputae). They had no particular relation to a city of Nazareth.
The root of their name may have been 'Truth' or it may have been the Hebrew noun 'netser' ('netzor'), meaning 'branch' or 'flower.' The plural of 'Netzor' becomes 'Netzoreem.' There is no mention of the Nazarenes in any of Paul's writings, although ironically, Paul is himself accused of being a Nazorean in 'Acts of the Apostles.' The reference scarcely means that Paul was a resident of Nazareth (we all know that Paul hails from Tarsus).
'For finding this man a pest, and moving sedition among all the Hebrews throughout the world, and a leader of the sect of the Nazaraeans.'
~Acts 24.5. (Darby Translation)
The Nazorim emerged towards the end of the 1st century, after a curse had been placed on heretics in Jewish daily prayer.
'Three times a day they say: 'May God curse the Nazarenes'.
~Epiphanius (Panarion 29.9.2)
The Nazarenes may have seen themselves as a 'branch from the stem of Jesse (the legendary King David's father)'. Certainly, they had their own early version of 'Matthew'. This lost text - the Gospel of the Nazarenes - can hardly be regarded as a 'Gospel of the inhabitants of Nazareth' ... particularly since Nazareth did not exist geographically at the time.
It was the later Gospel of Matthew which started the deceit that the title 'Jesus the Nazorene' should in some manner relate to Nazareth, by quoting 'prophecy':
"And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene."
~Matthew 2.23.
With this, Matthew closes his fable of Jesus's early years. Yet Matthew is misquoting - he would surely know that nowhere in Jewish prophetic literature is there any reference to a Nazarene. What is 'foretold' (or at least mentioned several times) in Old Testament scripture is the appearance of a Nazarite. For example:
"For, lo, thou shalt conceive, and bear a son; and no razor shall come on his head: for the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from the womb: and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the Philistines."
~Judges 13.5.
Matthew slyly substitutes one word for another. By replacing Nazarite ('he who vows to grow long hair and serve god') with a term which appears to imply 'resident of' he is able to fabricate a hometown link for his fictitious hero.
So then, how DID the village get its name?
It seems that, along with the Nozerim, a related Jewish/Christian faction, the Evyonim – ‘the Poor’ (later to be called Ebionites) - emerged about the same time. According to Epiphanius (Bishop of Salamis , Cyprus, circa 370 AD) they arose from within the Nazarenes.
They differed doctrinally from the original group in rejecting Paul and were ''Hebrews who pay honour to Christ as a just man...' They too, it seems, had their own prototype version of Matthew - 'The Gospel to the Hebrews.' A name these sectaries chose for themselves was 'Keepers of the Covenant,' in Hebrew Nozrei haBrit, whence Nosrim or Nazarene.
In other words, when it came to the crunch, the original Nazarenes split into two: those who tried to re-position themselves within the general tenets of Judaism ('Evyonim'-Nosrim); and those who rejected Judaism ('Christian'-Nosrim).
Now, we know that a group of 'priestly' families resettled an area in the Nazareth valley after their defeat in the Bar Kochbar War of 135 CE. It seems highly probable that they were Evyonim-Nosrim and named their village 'Nazareth' or the village of 'The Poor' either because of self-pity or because doctrinally they made a virtue out of their poverty.
"Blessed are the Poor in spirit for theirs is the kingdom of Heaven."
~Matthew 5:3
The writer of Matthew (re-writer of the proto-Matthew stories) heard of 'priestly' families moving to a place in Galilee which they had called 'Nazareth' - and decided to use the name of the new town for the hometown of his hero. Remember also, "Israel" was two territories. To the north, it was Israel. To the south it was Judah. Jerusalem was in Judah, the southern territories.
Just a thought ...
~Justin Taylor, ORDM., OCP., DM.
