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Nazarene 5

Historical Nazarenes
Pre-Christian Nazarenes

Abstract

Origen of Caesarea (185-254 AD) lived thirty miles from Nazareth, but could not find it. He concluded that many places mentioned in the gospels never existed. Before Constantine, Nazareth was attested only by the New Testament evangelists. Yet “Nazarene” was a word people understood. In the Qumran scrolls, the Hebrew word “nasi” is a messianic leader. The Nasi had the role of the messiah at the sacred meal of the council of the Essene community. In Ezekiel, nasi means the coming Davidic prince, the messiah. The plural “nesiim” means clouds, enabling the Nasi to come in the nesiim, reminding us of Daniel, but logically it means “princes”—the saints and angels of the heavenly host. Nasi seems to be the origin of “Nazarene”. Nazarenes were followers of the messianic leader, the Nasi, either Essenes or their converts.

Historical Nazarenes

From about 200 BC to 400 AD baptizing sects existed from Palestine into Arabia, Syria and Mesopotamia. They were known as Essenes (Ossaeans) Samaritans, Hemerobaptists (Daily Bathers), Masbuthaeans (Basmothaeans), Nazoraeans (Nasoraeans, Naassenes), Ebionites, Sampsaeans (Sabaeans) and Elchasaites. Thus, Epiphanius wrote that there were seven sects of Judaism—Sadducees, Scribes, Pharisees, Hemerobaptists, Ossaeans, Nasaraeans and Herodians. Hemerobaptists, Ossaeans and Nasaraeans seem to have been bathers. If minor varieties, or sub-sects, of these known ones were included, they were extremely numerous and widely popular. One or another had been set up in many places in the ancient near east around the early years of Christianity.

Though these sects had subtle differences, they all practised ritual baptism, and to a casual observer must have looked astonishingly similar. All came from the same base—the Pre-Christian Nasoraeans or Nazarenes. All had that element of the mystery religions that necessitated secrecy about their inner practices, and so they were not well known. Jesus was called “the Nazarene”, he was not “of Nazareth”, but placing his home at Nazareth, possibly a fictional place at the time, explained his title which otherwise made him a member of an existing sect, something the Church did not want to know. What was known about them was partly distorted by enemies like the Christian Church Fathers to make them seem base or heretical.

Epiphanius (367-404 AD), Bishop of Salamis, in Cyprus in 370 AD (Refutation of All Heresies 374-376 AD), who was born and lived in Palestine, adds that these various sects came out of the “Ossaeans”—the Essenes:

Only a few rare Nazoraeans are still to be found, and these in Upper Egypt and beyond Arabia, but the remainder of the Ossaeans, who used to dwell where their ancestors did, above the Dead Sea and on the other side with the Sampsaeans, no longer practice Jewish customs. They have become associated with the Ebionites.

Jerome (340-420 AD) speaks of Nazarenes as a sect distinct from the Christians. Epiphanius also notes that a sect he called the Nasaraeans—a pre-Christian and non-Christian sect—were not the same as the Christian sect called Nazoraeans. He said they lived in Gilead, Basham, and the Transjordan. They were Jews, revering Moses and believing he had received laws, but it was unlawful for them to eat meat or make sacrifices, and they disparaged the Christian books as fiction. Epiphanius called these Nasoraeans “Jews by nationality”, implying they were no longer Jews by religion.

Yet earlier patristic writers, Justin Martyr, Origen, Tertullian and Eusebius, call the original Jewish followers of Jesus, the Nazarenes. Mandaeans revere John the Baptist, who was a Nasoraean (Nazarene) meaning for them an adept in Nasoraean (Mandaean) teaching, and at healing bodies and souls. Jesus is the Nazarene, in the New Testament, while Paul is a Nazarene (Acts 11:19; 24:5). However, the patristic writers, usually indulging in polemics describe un-named cults as having the same characteristics as Essenes or Nazarenes. Plainly at some early stage, the Christians split from the original Nazarenes. Eventually the name Nazarene was discarded in favour of Christian.

Justin Martyr (100-165 AD) wrote a Socratic piece (Dialogue with Trypho, the Jew) in which his Jew asks Justin whether it is possible for a Jew who accepted Jesus as God’s Messiah, Judge and Ruler of His kingdom but observed the Jewish law as well, could be saved. Justin replies that he will be saved as long as he does not seek to persuade others that observance of the law is necessary to salvation.

Was the question put in the mouth of Trypho just rhetorical? It seems unlikely. There must have been Jews in the mid-second century who believed in Jesus as the Messiah. They were Jewish Christians and the answer implies that they thought the law was necessary though not sufficient for salvation. Though a hundred years earlier Paul had preached that the law of Moses had been abrogated, there were still Jewish Christians who did not accept what he said. Another point is how these Jews regarded God’s Messiah. Christians were seeing Jesus increasingly as a new god in his own right, but this was blasphemous for a pious Jew.

Essene belief might have stimulated the belief adopted by the gentile Christians. Essenes were pious Jews and could not have believed that the Messiah was another god. However, because they were expecting earth and heaven to unite, they saw the Righteous becoming indistinguishable from angels, just as Jesus explains. This belief system could therefore encompass the earthly Messiah becoming the same as the heavenly Messiah when God created the “yahad” of heaven and earth. The heavenly Messiah was the Archangel Michael, whose visage was like the sun, who was the Nasi of the heavenly host and who was, naturally, a supernatural being. Essenic Jews would have been able to comprehend this happening to Jesus but would have expected him within forty years to appear on a cloud and renew the world. When he failed to appear most Jews would have reverted to the law of Moses as the established route to salvation.

Hellenised Jews could have accepted the dying and rising figure of Jesus as a god, with no compunction because they were practical apostates of Judaism. They no longer practised the religion of their fathers, being far more impressed by Greek culture. By definition they were not interested in the law of Moses. Plainly then the Jews being discussed by Justin are the Jews of the Jerusalem Church.

Origen (184-254 AD) mentions Jewish believers as Ebionites (Contra Celsus, 5:61) who came in two varieties, one that believed in the virgin birth, and therefore accepted that Jesus was divine, and one that denied it because Jesus was born a man, accepting Jesus as a mortal Messiah in Jewish fashion.

Eusebius (HE 3:27) described the Ebionites as so called because of their “poor and mean opinions concerning Christ”—the name meaning “the Poor”. Again two types were described as Jews who strictly observed the Mosaic law and the Sabbath day. One type considered Jesus to be a virtuous man produced by normal intercourse. The other group of Ebionites accepted the virgin birth while denying that Jesus was God, Word, and Wisdom. They rejected Paul as an apostate from the law.

And among them some have placed the Gospel according to the Hebrews which is the delight of those of the Hebrews who have accepted Christ.

They disregarded the other gospels. However they celebrated the Lord’s days as a memorial of the resurrection of the Saviour, besides observing the Sabbath, as the law required.

Sometimes the Ebionite book was called the Gospel of the Nazarenes. S Jerome in the fourth century, in his commentary on Matthew, clumsily called this gospel the “gospel which the Nazarenes and Ebionites use” and, commentating on Isaiah, described the Nazarenes as those “who accept the Christ” yet “do not cease to observe the law”. In Epistle to Augustine, he said the Nazarenes believed in Christ, the Son of God, born of Mary the Virgin, and they say about him that he suffered under Pontius Pilate and rose again. The Nazarenes accuse the Scribes and Pharisees of making men sin against the Word of God to deny that Christ was the Son of God.

The Gospel according to the Hebrews has been totally “lost”, not a fragment existing today, another one of those Christian carelessnesses that cannot be excused by the neutral word “lost”. Here was the gospel revered by a Palestinian sect at the root of the Christian myth. It therefore had to go. The reason is plain—it contained too much truth for the Christians to tolerate. All we have are quotations from it in the polemics of the church fathers against heresy. Paul, in 1 Corinthians 15:7, says that Jesus appeared to James, who he describes, in Galatians 1:19, as “the Lord’s brother”. No account of this is given anywhere in the New Testament, presumably because the Christians wanted to play down James in favour of Peter, but it was reported to be in the Gospel According to the Hebrews.

Epiphanius speaks of the Nazarenes as having mastered the Hebrew language enabling them to read the Jewish scriptures in the original. They had the Gospel of Matthew entirely unabridged in Hebrew “as it was originally written”. It seems there was a work called Matthew’s Gospel written in Hebrew not Greek, because many Church Fathers speak of it—Papias (150-170 AD), Irenaeus (170 AD), Origen (210 AD), Eusebius (315 AD), Epiphanius (370 AD) and Jerome (382 AD). It will have been a collection of sayings like “Q”. Epiphanius has more to say in Panarion about these sectarians who “did not call themselves Christians but Nazarenes”:

They are simply complete Jews. They use not only the New Testament but the Old Testament as well, as the Jews do… They have no different ideas, but confess everything exactly as the Law proclaims it and in the Jewish fashion, except for their belief in the Christ, if you please! For they acknowledge both the resurrection of the dead and the divine creation of all things, and declare that God is one, and that his son is Jesus Christ. They are trained to a nicety in Hebrew. For among them the entire Law, the Prophets, and the… Writings… are read in Hebrew, as they surely are by the Jews. They are different from the Jews, and different from Christians, only in the following. They disagree with Jews because they have come to faith in Christ, but since they are still fettered by the Law—circumcision, the Sabbath, and the rest—they are not in accord with Christians… they are nothing but Jews….

So, they believed in resurrection of the dead and God the Creator but also proclaimed the one God and his Son Jesus Christ. They differed from Jews in believing in Christ, and differed from Christians in observing the Law, including the need for circumcision and observance of the Jewish Sabbath. Traditional Jews hated the Nazarenes for accepting the divinity of Christ, and prayed three times a day:

May God curse the Nazarenes.

Irenaeus, Tertullian and Hippolytus spoke of Ebionites rejecting the virgin birth and did not distinguish another variety that accepted it.

The Jerusalem Church led by James, the brother of Jesus, according to Acts also consisted of Jews who were normal in every respect but believed in Jesus. The Nazarenes of Epiphanius were the heirs of the first Jerusalem congregation.

The Moslems believe in a virgin birth of Jesus but still consider him a prophet—a man—not a god. Since the Moslems had their ideas about Christianity from the Christians of Arabia who were Ebionites led away from Palestine into Pella and the east at the time of the Jewish War, some Ebionites apparently did believe in the virgin birth.

Pre-Christian Nazarenes

A century ago William B Smith argued that there was a sect of Nazarenes in existence before the followers of Jesus. It now seems he was correct. Epiphanius in Heresies spoke of two types of Nazarenes. One seemed to be a sect from Beroe in Syria who were a type of Christian using a gospel related to Matthew’s—this might have been the Logia, not the gospel we know today. A similar account occurs in his book, On Heretical Fables, by Theodoret, bishop of Cyrrhus beyond Antioch, who wrote:

The Nazarenes are Jews who know Christ as a just man and use a gospel called According to Peter.

The expression “a just man” denotes an Essene saint. The others were pre-Christian Nazarenes. Both sects had similar characteristics and were identifiable with the Ebionites, the poor—a name of the Essenes. It was also the name of the members of the Jerusalem Church but that was because they inherited the name from their founders, the Essenes.

However, Hippolytus tells us of a sect which dates back to remote antiquity called the Naasseni, alleging that they alone had sounded the depths of knowledge, and were priests who followed the teaching of James! These priests, Hippolytus thought, were the first heretics, preceding the Ebionites and the Elchasaites, but, if so, they were most likely to have preceded James too. James, the brother of the Lord, handed down “numerous discourses” to Mariamne (Mary), who then passed them to the Naassenes.

In his description of the Naassenes, Hippolytus indicates that Jesus, in a non-gospel tradition, drove back the Jordan and created a celestial Jordan. They seemed to allegorize the material world as Egypt—some suspect that the Essene center at Qumran was called by them Egypt—and the spiritual world as a heavenly Jerusalem and a Euphrates of Light, or a heavenly Jordan. It is quite like the Egyptians seeing the Milky Way as the heavenly Nile. Naassenes reminds us of both Essene or Ossene and Nazarene, and the Essenes considered themselves as priests, like the Nasuriya of the Mandaeans.

Hippolytus says the Naassenes were the sect that first had a doctrine of a “Spiritual One” who is “born again” and is the “Gate” to the “Primal Adam” or “Perfect Man”. Eisenman says the Mandaeans have the same ideas, derived from the Ebionites.

Hippolytus preserves one of their hymns. It begins mournfully chanting about a lost soul, groaning and weeping in suffering, trying to find God but unable to escape from a labyrinth beyond the kingdom of light. Looking on, Jesus appeals to his father, saying: “Send me for his salvation that I might descend with the seals in my hands, that I might traverse the æons, that I might make known the secrets, that I might reveal unto him the essence of God, and announce unto him the mystery of the holy life which is wisdom”. This is considered Gnostic but its language resonates with that of the scrolls.

The Palestinian Talmud tells of three hundred nezirim who in the reign of Alexander Jannaeus (104-78 BC) came up to Jerusalem when Rabbi Shimeon ben Shetach was there. He found a way of freeing one hundred and fifty of them from their vow of Nezirut. Nezirim are obviously Nazirites and Nezirim is an excellent source of the word “Nazarene”, yet these Nezirim were over a hundred years before Jesus.

There is also tentative evidence from the traditions of the Carmelite monks, known as the “White Friars” from their white mantle. The order was founded by Berthold, a French Catholic priest who offered himself as a hostage to God during the crusades in exchange for a victory in battle. The battle won, to seek what God might want of him, he decided to go to Mount Carmel, where Elijah and Elisha, the prophets, had meditated. He was astonished to find a small colony of Orthodox monks already established there. They told him they had, centuries before, succeeded a school of Jewish Christian monks who had themselves succeeded a tribe of Jewish hermits who had worshipped on the mountain since before the time of Jesus—indeed to the time of Elijah himself! The only Jewish monks we know of are the Essenes of Qumran, whom we have associated with the name Nazarene, and many of whom would have become the first Jewish Christians. It seems likely that the Essenes or Nazarenes had a monastic community on Mount Carmel because of its association with the prophet Elijah as well as the one now recognized at Qumran.

The Nazarenes of Epiphanius were indeed a pre-Christian sect (in Aramaic, the natzariya) identifiable with the Essenes. They regarded themselves as “protectors” of the true faith of Israel, like the Samaritans of Samaria, who thought of themselves as the keepers (shamar) of the Israelite religion, as opposed to the Judaeans, just as nasar means “keeper”. The word Jew means Judaean and was pejoratively applied—not least in the New Testament—to the Pharisees whose base was in Judaea, particularly Jerusalem. The Hebrew religion after the Jewish War was preserved by the Pharisees—Rabbinism is Pharisaism—and so everyone who practised it became known as Jews and still are. The pre-Christian Nazareans, like the Samaritans also opposed Judaean traditions, believing that the Pharisees had enfeebeled the Law of Moses. They were vegetarians and opposed animal sacrifices, but were circumcised and kept the Sabbath and Jewish festivals. Plainly there was a fashion for naming sects after the region where they were strongest, but members of the sect were not necessarily natives of the region!

Within twenty years of the crucifixion they were being called Christians. Nazarenes thought the end had come and wanted to convert the whole of Israel before God’s Day of Vengeance. The apostle, Paul, extended the elect of God further still—to the foreigner. He wanted to give all men the chance to join God’s elect and enter God’s kingdom, even gentiles. Paul identified with the Essenes because they had split from the Jerusalem temple. The Essenes contrasted themselves with the temple hierarchy in the Damascus Rule. Quoting Proverbs 15:8 it says:

The sacrifice of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord but the prayer of the righteous is his delight,

which reminds us of Jesus’s discussion with the Pharisee (Mk 12:28-34). For the Essenes in the last days the split with the temple was of no further consequence. They were God’s elect and the dawn of the kingdom was nigh when the wicked and their polluted temple would be destroyed. The kingdom never came but the temple was destroyed by the Romans leaving the two traditions: the Pharisaic and the Essene. The one became Judaism and the other became Christianity.

Page Tags: Jesus and Nazareth, Nazarenes, Call to All Israel in the Last Days, Jesus, New Testament, Meaning of Nazarene, Pre-Christian Nazarenes, Christians, Christianity, Essenes, Qumran, Messiah, Kingdom of God, Apocalypticism, Mystery

Last uploaded: 19 April, 2008.