* Samuel, if we rightly regard him as a Nazirite, was also a priest.
the example of Absalom (25S 14"), whom they regarded as a Nazirite), while the latter permitted him to come into contact with a dead body, with- out having in consequence to go through the legal process of purification. But even in these days genuine ney ΜΕΘ by no means extinct, and there must have been some among the Nazirites who were animated by a genuinely religious spirit. John the Baptist is described as a Nazirite for life (Lk 1"), as was also, according to Eusebius (HZ πὶ. xxiii. 3, following Hegesippus), James the brother of our Lord. Anna (Lk 2") also is supposed by some to have been a Nazirite, but this is a mere conjecture.
Ac 21!"*- shows that the early Jewish Christians occasionally took the temporary Nazirite vow. It is also an illustration of a custom mentioned by Josephus (Ant. XIX. vi. 1), that wealthy Jews paid, in the case of poor Nazirites, the cost of the sacrifices required on the expiry of the period covered by the vow, and thus enabled poorer Israelites to undertake such a vow. Those who were thus ‘at charges’ for these poorer Nazirites, having themselves been purified for the purpose, “a appear along with them in the temple, and had probably to regard themselves as consecrated persons until all the prescribed rites were duly performed. The seven days mentioned in v.” do not imply that in such cases they had also to take a vow for seven anes the expression merely in- forms us that, in this particular instance, seeing there were four vows to be paid, it required seven days to offer the necessary sacrifices (cf. v.* ‘ until the offering was offered for every one of them’).
In connexion with Ac 1818 the question has been raised, whether St. Paul himself had taken a Nazirite vow. According to the rules laid down by the scribes, such a vow might be made outside οἱ Palestine; but it had to be performed, in harmony with Nu 6", at the temple in Jerusalem. As to this, the only point of difference between the schools of Hillel and Shammai referred to the length of time during which the person who had vowed the vow in a heathen land must reside in Palestine before he was permitted to pay it at the temple. The school οἱ Shammai Renandal a residence in Palestine of only thirty days, which was the shortest and most common period of consecration ; whereas the school of Hillel insisted that it must be for the whole time to which the vow originally referred. Nor can St. Paul’s shearin of ΤῈ head have been in consequence of levitica! defilement contracted during the vow period (Nu 6°) ; for, according to the scribes, in the case of the defiled Nazirite, the shearing of the head had to take place in the holy land (though not necessarily at the temple); and on the eighth day he had to offer his sacrifice of cleansing at the temple (ef. Nu 6”). The vow in question cannot therefore have been a strictly Nazirite vow. In order, never- theless, to vindicate its character as a real Nazirite vow, some have supposed that, having been living among Gentiles, tlie apostle shore his head at the beginning of his period of consecration, after the analogy of the Nazirite who had been in any way defiled while others have supposed that it was a vow of special consecration to God, involving a temporary growth of the hair, and a subsequent cutting of it off, and that such a vow, though simply analogous to the Nazirite vow, and not in- volving a personal appearance at the temple, or the co- persion of the priests, was allowed to Jews of the Dispersion as a substitute for the strictl legal vow. It is admitted, however, that there is no evidence in support of these ΒΌΡΡΟΞΙ ΔΌΣ; It was evidently a private vow which the apostle kad
taken, and which he paid by shearing his head at Cenchree.
NEAH
ee LrrsxatTurs.—The art. ‘ Nasiriat,’ in Herzog, ΠΕΣ, by Oehler and v. Orelli; ‘ Nasiriier,’ in Schenkel’s Bibel-Lexikon, by Dill- mann, and in Riehm’s HW 52, by Riehm; Dillmann, Numeri, Deuteronomium und Josua, 31ff.; Budde, Das Buch der Richter, 90ff.; Driver, The Books of Joel and Amos, 152f. 5 W. R. Smith, "RS? 828'f., 481ff.; Schultz, Alttest. Theologie, 109 ff. (Eng. tr. 1, 161 ff.); Smend, Lehrbuch der alttest. Religions- eschichte®, 93-96; Oehler, Theologie des Alten Testaments, 135 (Eng. tr. ii. 17ff.); Ewald, Die Alterthtimer des Volkes srael3, 113 ff. ; Nowack, Lehrb. ἃ. Heb. Arch. ii. 133 ff. ; Ben- zinger, Heb. Archdologie, 430ff.; Vilmar, ‘Die symbolische leutung des Naziriiergeliibdes,’ in SK, 1864, p. 488 ff. ; Grill, ‘Ueber Bedeutung und Ursprung des Nasiraergeliibdes,’ in Jahrbb. f. protest. Theologie, 1880, p. 645 ff.; G. B. Gray, ‘The Nazirite,’ in Journ. of Theol. Studies, vol. i. p. 201 ff. (Jan. 1900).
D. EATON. NEAH.—Named only in Jos 19" ayzn axne7 ἢ} ‘Rimmon stretching to the Né‘ah’ (B 'Ῥεμμωνὰ ᾿Αμαθὰρ ’Aotd, A ἹῬεμμωνάμ᾽ Madaplus‘Avvovd). The name has not been recovered. Knobel identifies it with Neiel of ν. 7, comparing the relation of the words Jabneh and Jabneel. This does not help us much in any case, for the site of Neiel itself has not been discovered, and it was Eeobably con-