Traditionally the Gospels that do this are the Ebionite and the Hebrew; this text excludes those two.
The names "Nazaraeans" and "Nazarenes" are also both used, mostly because scholars can never agree on anything, including what to include, or indeed to exclude. Currently only 36 verses are accepted, 23 of them from Jerome, the rest from later mediaeval sources.
The idea for such a work belongs to Paschasius Radbertus (790-865), the Abbot of Corbie in northern France, whose best-known work is "De Corpore et Sanguine Domini", an explanation of the nature of the Eucharist, written around 831 CE. Why he chose to name this pseudo-gospel after the Nazarenes is unclear, as they had long been declared heretical, and the texts that Radbertus was attributing were not: they rejected observance of ceremonial law, and regarded Paul as superior to Jesus when it came to elucidating revealed truth in a way that even a heathen could comprehend; but beyond this they were fairly mainstream in their faith and practice.
Nazarenes, by the way, has nothing to do with the town of Nazareth - they were called Nazarenes because they practised Nazirut, a period of "retreat" such as would become the custom of Lent later on, and which Jesus himself practiced during his "forty days in the wilderness" (Matthew 4), though he got the Devil tempting him added on.
Nevertheless, scholars down the ages have assumed that it was connected to the town of Nazareth (click here), where Jesus is said to come from, according to the Synoptic Gospels. But... there was no town of Nazareth at the time of Jesus! There was an ancient shrine and cemetery at what is now Kibbutz Kfar ha Horesh, about three miles from what would become Nazareth, but no Nazareth itself. Why the belief that there was? I shall return to that in a moment. But first; if he did not come come from there, where did he come from:
Nevertheless, scholars down the ages have assumed that it was connected to the town of Nazareth (click here), where Jesus is said to come from, according to the Synoptic Gospels. But... there was no town of Nazareth at the time of Jesus! There was an ancient shrine and cemetery at what is now Kibbutz Kfar ha Horesh, about three miles from what would become Nazareth, but no Nazareth itself. Why the belief that there was? I shall return to that in a moment. But first; if he did not come come from there, where did he come from:
Jesus spent most of his ministry around the Sea of Galilee, preaching at Kfar Nahum (Capernaum), feeding the five thousand at Tabgha, involved with Mary of Magdala, and finding his Apostles on the shores of the lake at exactly the same north-western corner - all those places just named are within less than a mile of each other. The Yehudit name for the Sea of Galilee is Genasseret, and the village of Ginosar sat within that same square mile - easy enough to slip the G and have Jesus of Genasseret become Jesus of Nazareth, especially when Isaiah 11:1-4 (apparently, but see my commentary) has prophesied the coming of a Messiah:
In Yehudit the first of these verses reads, phonetically: "Va yatsa choter mi geza Yishai, ve netser mi sharashav yiphreh (וְיָצָא חֹטֶר מִגֵּזַע יִשָׁי וְנֵצֶר מִשָּׁרָשָׁיו יִפְרֶה)". The key word is "netser" (נצר), meaning "branch".
The term "Christian" was not the name by which the earliest Christians were known in their native land. They were called, as they still are today, Notsrim (נצרים), and in Arabic and Aramaic as Nasara, from the same source. Notsrim and Genasseret; by the time the gospels were being written, by men who had not lived in Yisra-El, and were not themselves witnesses, and who did not speak Yehudit or even Aramaic as their daily language, and who may well not have known Yehudit even as a scriptural language, the town of Nazareth (נצרת - correctly Natsaret) had indeed been founded, or a village anyway, probably a single farm on a hillside that later expanded to become a village. Why was it given the name Natsaret? Perhaps because it was an early convert to Christianity who established it. Perhaps because this was where Mary went to live, after the Crucifixion, though tradition insists that she came from Nazareth, thirty years before the Crucifixion.
"A shoot will come up from the stump of Jesse; from his roots a Branch will bear fruit. The Spirit of YHVH will rest on him, the Spirit of wisdom and of understanding, the Spirit of counsel and of might, the Spirit of the knowledge and fear of the Lord - and he will delight in the fear of the Lord."By whom Yesha-Yahu meant Chizki-Yah(Hezekiah), who would indeed become the next Mashiyach (sacred king). But leave that minor point aside.
In Yehudit the first of these verses reads, phonetically: "Va yatsa choter mi geza Yishai, ve netser mi sharashav yiphreh (וְיָצָא חֹטֶר מִגֵּזַע יִשָׁי וְנֵצֶר מִשָּׁרָשָׁיו יִפְרֶה)". The key word is "netser" (נצר), meaning "branch".
The term "Christian" was not the name by which the earliest Christians were known in their native land. They were called, as they still are today, Notsrim (נצרים), and in Arabic and Aramaic as Nasara, from the same source. Notsrim and Genasseret; by the time the gospels were being written, by men who had not lived in Yisra-El, and were not themselves witnesses, and who did not speak Yehudit or even Aramaic as their daily language, and who may well not have known Yehudit even as a scriptural language, the town of Nazareth (נצרת - correctly Natsaret) had indeed been founded, or a village anyway, probably a single farm on a hillside that later expanded to become a village. Why was it given the name Natsaret? Perhaps because it was an early convert to Christianity who established it. Perhaps because this was where Mary went to live, after the Crucifixion, though tradition insists that she came from Nazareth, thirty years before the Crucifixion.
The logo at the top of this page confirms that there are churches in the world today which identify themselves as Nazarene, and if you type the word into a search engine you will easily be able to identify them: Olney, Troy, even a Theological Seminary, though that one appears to me to be Wesleyan. Probably these churches are picking up the account of Tertullus prosecuting Paul, in Acts 24:5, and describing him as "a nuisance" and "a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes", which is clearly Tertullus not knowing the correct name of the sect. And probably these churches are recognising Tertullus' error, but choosing, perhaps even ironically, to take back the name, calling themselves Nazarenes in order to support him from a temporal distance.
After that one-and-only reference in Acts, the name makes no further appearance in known history until Eusebius, in his "Onomasticon", speaks of the "Nazoreans", which may be a different version of the same error, or a completely different error, or even possibly correct, but in a different context, though this is the least likely, as Epiphanius confirmed when he made a clear differentiation of the two in his "Panarion" (4th century CE). From his time onwards, Nazarenes have been regarded as those early Christians who followed James the Just, the brother of Jesus, rather than Paul, or Peter. Most of them continued to live in Yeru-Shala'im, or at least within Roman Judea, and are said to have kept some aspects of the Mosaic Law - though after the destruction of the Temple in 70 CE, and until the "substitute" had been established by Yochanan ben Zakkai after that event, there were actually very few of these that anyone could follow.
Copyright © 2020 David Prashker
All rights reserved
The Argaman Press
No comments:
Post a Comment