Nazarene (sect)

The Nazarenes (or Nazoreans; Greek: Ναζωραῖοι, Nazōraioi) were an early Jewish Christian sect in first-century Judaism. The first use of the term is found in the Acts of the Apostles () of the New Testament, where Paul the Apostle is accused of being a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes ("πρωτοστάτην τε τῆς τῶν Ναζωραίων αἱρέσεως") before the Roman procurator Antonius Felix at Caesarea Maritima by Tertullus. At that time, the term simply designated followers of Jesus of Nazareth, as the Hebrew term (nôṣrî), and the Arabic term نَصْرَانِي (naṣrānī), still do. נוֹצְרִים (Nazarenes) can also be found in 2 Kings 17:9 and 18:8, in the Hebrew, but usually gets translated as, "watchtower" or "watchmen." The "tower of the Nazarenes" is described as the northern boundary in, 2 Kings 18:8. As time passed, the term came to refer to a sect of Jewish Christians who continued to observe the Torah along with Noachide gentiles who were grafted into the covenant, in contrast to gentile Christians who eschewed Torah observance. They are described by Epiphanius of Salamis and are mentioned later by Jerome and Augustine of Hippo. The writers made a distinction between the Nazarenes of their time and the "Nazarenes" mentioned in Acts 24:5. Nazarene (title) The English term Nazarene is commonly used to translate two related Greek words that appear in the New Testament: Nazōraios (Ναζωραῖος, Ναζαραῖος) ("Nazorean") and Nazarēnos ("Nazarene"). The term Nazōraios may have a religious significance instead of denoting a place of origin, while Nazarēnos (Ναζαρηνός) is an adjectival form of the phrase apo Nazaret "from Nazareth."Frank Ely Gaebelein, James Dixon Douglas The Expositor's Bible commentary: with the New International Version 1984 "Matthew certainly used Nazōraios as an adjectival form of apo Nazaret ("from Nazareth" or "Nazarene"), even though the more acceptable adjective is Nazarēnos (cf. Bonnard, Brown, Albright and Mann, Soares Prabhu)." Because of this, the phrases traditionally rendered as "Jesus of Nazareth" can also be translated as "Jesus the Nazarene" or "Jesus the Nazorean.