It seems clear fi'om the NT data that the term ' Nazarene ' was an early designation applied to Jesus and His disciples generally. It thus was the Jewish (Oriental) equivalent of the speciticallj- Gentile term • Christian.' ' Nazarene ' was not the title given by the Christians of Palestine to them- selves, but by others outride the Christian fellow- ship. The names for, and used bj-, themselves were much more probably such as ' believers,' 1!
* It occurs again only in Lk 24i9, where, however, the reading is doubtful (AD read SxZuia'ii?).
+ Cf. su<5h forms as ns-is (1 K 179) in Bibl. Hebrew.
♦ The verse so interpreted would run : ' It is too light a thing that thou shouldesl be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and (shouldest be) the Xazarene ("iiSj) to restore Israel ;
i I will also give thee for a light of the Gentiles,' etc. This is one ] of the Servant-passages which was undoubtedly applied to I Jesus in early Jewish-Christian circles. Cf. Lk 232. I g Developing a theorv suggested by Xeubauer and Gratz. See EBi, col. 3360, g.v. 'Xazareth.'
See F.MTH. It is always im|)ortant to distinguish the names . used by a body of itself from those given by outsiders. Another case is probably 'Pharisees,' Heb. cr^i? = C) 'separatists.' Their own name for themselves in the earlier period maj- have been 1ia.9idim. ' pious ' : later, such terms as crr" ' wise,' TC'jn Drn,">3n 'colleague,' were used. Cf. also remark on Ebionites I at end of article.
236
NAZARENE
ISTAZARETH
'brethren' {e.g. Ac 9^"), 'saints' (v.^^, etc.), 'elect.' In time ' Nazarene ' seems to have acquired a somewhat contemptuous or, at any rate, hostile n uancc (cf. Jn 1'"'). The followers of ' the Nazarene ' liad evidently been made to feel the reproacli of the alleged Galilrean origin of their Messiah.* Moved by these influences, the Jewish-Christians seem to have transformed the title 'Sa^aprjvoi — which had now become in the mouths of their opponents an opprobrious one — into the honorific one Nafajpaios, and to have substituted the latter for the former. In this way, at any rate, Mt. seems to turn the edge of the reproach levelled at the Christian Messiah in the characteristically Jewisli- Palestinian designation of Jesus as ' tlie Nazarene ' (n^iijn yw:). Assuming, then, that the term '^a^wpalos is an honorific title educed in this way by tiie Jewish- Christians themselves, it remains to elucidate the process by which the form was arrived at, and its exact significance.
'Sa^wpaTos may be a Greek form of ndziird (N-ji!.'j),t the Aram, equivalent of the Heb. Messianic term -\-^i 'Branch' or -Shoot.' The selection of this particular Messianic term was dictated by the necessity of finding a counter-term to 'Na^ap-rjuos. 'Sa^upaios is thus an honorific title given by the disciples themselves to Jesus, and expresses the conviction that He was the nezer of Is IV — the ' Branch ' of Messianic Prophecy. Its application to members of the Ciiristian community naturally followed. See also following article.
3. "■ Nazarene' as a commtuiity -designation. — It is clear not only from Ac 24^ but also from Mt 22"* that the Christian communities of Palestine, and even outsiders, at first bore the name of ' Naza- renes.' The writer of Mt 2-^ evidently belonged to a community so designated. The name is, of course, specifically Jewish, and it remained tiie characteristic Oriental-Jewish term for Christians generally (e.g. in the Talmud), though primarily it was the Jewish Christians of Palestine who were thought of. An interesting piece of early evidence of this usage has in recent years come to light in the Palestinian recension J of the Shcmoneh Esveh. As is well known, the 12th of these ' Benedictions ' contains the famous imprecation on 'slanderers' or 'heretics.' In tiie Palestinian version an ex])licit reference is made to ' Nazar- enes and Sectaries' {minim).% Thoiigh the clause containing tliese words may not belong to the earliest form of the prayer (early 2nd cent. A.D. ), it is, at any rate, not very much later. Jerome (Ep. 1 12) makes allusion to the use of this ' cursing ' prayer in the Jewish synagogues throughout the East.
A Jewish-Christian sect of ' Nazarenes ' is re- ferred to both by Jerome and Epiphanius. They are apparently to be distinguished from the Ebion- ites, though very little exact information is extant concerning them.||
* The Galilajan population seems to have been by no means strict in carrying out certain legal enactments regarded as im- portant by the Rabbis. A feeling of distrust, if not of con- tempt, of the Galilsean population seems to have prevailed in Rabbinical circles. For a full and minute investigation of the relevant data, see the valuable monograph of A. Buchler (Der galildische 'Am-ha-ares des zweiten Jahrhunderts. Vienna, 1906).
t Or rather the adjectival form of this, n;7S3. The Aram.
word N-iisj is guaranteed by the Syr. \JO^=surculii!i (Heb. ■1V3) ; see Payne-Smith, Thes. col. 2443. ~^
{ Discovered by Prof. S. Schechter among the Cairo Genizah MSS, and published by him in the JQR, vol. x. [1898] pp. 654-
5 See, further, an art. bv the present writer in Church and S^^nago(J^le, vol. v. [1903] p. 167 ft. (' The Jewish Prayer against Heretics ').