Nazarenes and Christianity

[RHEMtron]

excerpt from Rejection of Pascal's Wager

Nazarenes and Christians

It would probably come as a shock to most Christians today that the original followers of Jesus were never called Christians. They were called Nazarenes. [1] The gospels showed that the Galilean was normally referred to as Jesus the Nazarene (Mark 1:24; John 18:5). [2] Most modern New Testament translations render this as "Jesus of Nazareth" but the former represents the more common form of words in the original Greek version. [3]
It was in Antioch that the words "Christian" was first used [4], to describe the followers of Paul! (Acts 11:25)

The term Nazarene could have had meaning or meanings to the first followers of Jesus which are no longer know to us. At the simplest level, it could simply mean someone from the town of Nazareth. [6] In its Hebrew form the word Nazarene could take on a few different meanings apart from the normal meaning of the man from Nazareth. Depending on how it is actually spelled in Hebrew, it could take these forms: netzer, nazir or nosri. Netzer means branch or offshoot, which may signify a belief in Jesus' messianic descent from David (Isaiah 11:1). Nazir means "a holy man of God". Nosri can mean "one who guards or watches over." [7] All these possibilities goes to show that the original term for followers of Jesus was one that was heavily loaded with meanings which were different from the term "Christian".

We do not know very much about the Nazarenes. The early Christians were very zealous in stamping out heretical beliefs. Our knowledge about them comes almost entirely from the writings of the early church fathers such as Justin Martyr (c100-165), Ireneaus (c130-200), Hippolytus (c185-254), Origen (c185-254), Hegesippus (2nd cent), Eusebius (c260-340), Epiphanus (c315-403)and Jerome (c342-420) who considered the Nazarenes as a heretical Christian sect. [a] [8] As a consequence we have very scarce and sometimes distorted information about them.

The first leader of the Nazarene sect was James the Just, the brother of Jesus. [10] We find hints of his primacy over Peter (which tradition and the gospels ascribed as the leader as the apostles) in the epistles of Paul and in Acts. We find, even in Luke's largely reworked account of the Jerusalem council that James' leadership was implied. For it was he who decided on the issue with the words "I rule" or "My judgment is" (Acts 15:19). We find in Galatians the incident where Peter was ordered by James to stay away from the Gentiles (Galatians 2:12). It was James, who was the leader of the first church of Jesus in Jerusalem. [11]

Initially, the Nazarenes were never considered heretical by the Pharisees. In fact they were so zealous for the law of Moses that the Nazarenes (or Jerusalem "Christians") were considered an ultra-pious group of Jews. [12] As the early Church Father, Hegesippus, relates, James was famous for his strict observance of the Jewish law and for undertaking vows which are normally taken only by the most devout Pharisee. [13] As James, Peter and, presumably, many of their followers knew the earthly Jesus, it is hard to imagine that these actions would be contrary to Jesus' teachings. It was more likely that they were doing what Jesus, when he was alive, commanded them to do. In fact these original apostles of Jesus, headed by James and Peter, never accepted Paul as a true apostle. The uneasy relationship forged after the Jerusalem council was broken off at Antioch and was never mended. Despite Paul's attempts to bribe his way back with an offering of cash collection from his Gentile congregations, James and his church never accepted Paul back into the fold.

When the Nazarenes were persecuted they were persecuted by the Sadducees, a sect already hostile to the Pharisees. In fact Acts preserved an incident in which Peter was saved by Gamaliel, the leader of the Pharisees, from being sentenced to death (Acts 5:37). [14] And when James was condemned by the Sadducees in AD62, the Pharisees protested on his behalf. The Pharisees eventually succeeded in having the high priest, who was a Sadducee, removed for this illegal execution. [15] The Jewish scholar, Hyam Maccoby (b. 1924) has this to add:

The accusations made in Acts that the Pharisees persecuted the Nazarene are just as untrue as the similar accusations made in the gospels in connection with Jesus himself. The Pharisees had no reason to persecute the Nazarenes. They were not teaching any doctrine which was opposed to Pharisaic Judaism. [16]


As Hegesippus tells us, after the death of James, the surviving apostles met with Jesus' family and selected Symeon, son of Cleophas, to be the new leader of the Nazarenes. Our sources tell us that Symeon was the first cousin of Jesus. The Nazarene leadership apparently followed a dynastic line (echoing the zealot tradition) for we also know that the grandson of Jesus brother Jude, James and Sokker, were associated with the leadership of the sect. [17] There were fifteen leaders of the Nazarene sect (including James and Symeon), all of which were circumcised Jews. Their line was finally extirpated in AD132 during the second Jewish revolt. [18]

The beliefs of the Nazarenes (soon deprecatorily called the Ebionites-the poor ones-by the developing orthodox-catholic church) [19] were all we would have expected based on our earlier analysis of Jesus and his actual teachings. Their beliefs contradicted those of the Christians on many points.

According to Justin Martyr (c100-165) and Epiphanus (c315-403), the Nazarenes did not believe in the virgin birth. They considered Jesus to be born of normal parentage [20]. And although they believed Jesus to be the messiah [21], they rejected the genealogies that show Jesus ancestry from David. [22] They continued to follow the precepts of the Jewish law, just like Peter and James had done. [23] The Nazarenes never considered Jesus to be divine (i.e. God the Son) but that he was given the messiahship after his baptism by John. [24] The Nazarenes never accepted the teachings and writings of Paul. [25] In fact, they looked upon Paul as an apostate who was not of pure Jewish blood. [26]

We know from Saint Jerome (c342-420) that the Nazarenes even have their own gospel in Aramaic, known as the Gospel of the Nazarenes or the Gospel of the Hebrews, which contained saying attributed to Jesus not found in the canonical gospels. The sayings were such that they were very likely to have been based on the actual utterance of the historical Jesus. Some fragments of this gospel still survive today. [27] Some scholars believe that the author of the canonical gospel of Matthew used the gospel of the Nazarenes as one of his sources. It could well be that Q was also a Nazarene document. [28] In the Nazarene gospel, Jesus was considered to be a prophetically inspired man but a man nevertheless. In no way was he considered divine. [29]

The basic doctrine of the Nazarene was that Jesus would return soon to liberate the Jews from foreign oppression and inaugurate God's kingdom on earth. They were expecting the parousia. [30] It was this expectation of the imminent second coming that actually brought about the weakening and eventual disappearance of the sect. [31]

The Jewish revolt of AD70 led to the death of many Nazarenes, for being loyal Jews, they stayed back and defended the city of Jerusalem against the Romans. [32] There is a tradition that some of the Nazarenes may have fled to Pella, across the River Jordan, during the siege. [33] That tradition may or may not be true, but the fact remains that the majority of Nazarenes along with other Jews perished during the Jewish war. [34] The remaining Nazarenes probably expected Jesus to come in his glory during the war, and the defeat was a bitter pill to swallow. How will Jesus return to Jerusalem if the city was no more? [35]

The remaining number of Nazarenes after the war were too small for the sect to have a significant presence outside of Palestine. Paul and his Christianity had a free reign outside Palestine among the Gentiles. It flourished and developed pagan ideas, unchecked by the historical Jesus of the Nazarenes. Now the whole of Judaism, including the Pharisees, started to turn against the Nazarenes. The development of Pauline Christianity took an anti-Semitic bias, which was taken as proof by the Pharisees that Jesus could not have been the messiah. [36] By AD90 the Nazarenes were excluded from the synagogues by their congregational prayers which refers to the Nazarenes as minim (Hebrew for heretic).[b] As Christianity began to develop in the major cities of the Roman world; in Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, Ephesus and Corinth; the infusion of pagan ideas into these churches soon made them doubt the orthodoxy of the Nazarenes. [37] Thus the Nazarenes became isolated from both Judaism and Christianity.

The number of Nazarenes began to dwindle even further. Their slow and irreversible journey to complete extinction had begun. We still read about the Nazarenes during the third century AD, worshipping at what used to be Peter's house in Capernaum.[38] By around 400AD the Nazarene sect had ceased to exist. The few remaining believers declaring to the last man that Jesus was the messiah but not God and that Paul was a deceiver who taught his own theology, not Jesus'. [39]

Jesus, in a way, was a founder of a religious movement. He founded, through his apostles, the sect of the Nazarenes within Judaism. The sect did not last more than four centuries. It was another religion, Christianity, which claimed him not only as its founder but also as God incarnate. It was something the historical Jesus would have probably been shocked to hear, as we can vouched from the reaction of the Nazarenes to it. The sect he founded dwindled and disappeared form the face of the earth. One man, Paul, took his name and expounded his own theology that developed the heretical doctrine which was called Christianity. The historian Hugh Schonfield summarized the situation thus:

[i]t is to the Nazarene records that we ought chiefly to look for our knowledge of Jesus, and we must regard Nazarenism as the true Christianity. As the Nazarenes throughout the period of personal recollection and down to the third generation, that is to say at least seventy five years after the death of Jesus, denied his deity and his virgin birth, we must recognize that these are alien doctrines subsequently introduced by a partly paganized Church, as Justin Martyr in the middle of the second century more or less admits. The Church which received them had no other course open than to belittle the Nazarenes and denounce them as heretics. The historian here has no difficulty in detecting the real heretics...[40]

i know that was lengthy, but any thoughts?

[wwwdlhow27]

It's fascinating. How about your thoughts on the Essenes. My understanding is Joseph and Mary were Essenes and that Jesus was raised among them and according to their teachings.

Also, FYI, The Order of Nazorean Essenes and their current activity may be found at: http://essenes.net/new/subintro.html

[RHEMtron]

The Essenes are an interesting study. For those that don't know who they are, they, as Josephus the Jewish Historian described, as one of the 3 sects in "Jewish Philosophy". Theyre responsible for the Dead Sea Scrolls.

What's interesting is their master was "the Teacher of Righteousness". There isnt much known about this person, but there are scattered Christian and Talmud references to this person in antiquity as a "mircale worker" named Yeishu ha Notzri... or Jesus/Jesua ben Pantera/Pentera/Pandera/Pandira [of course all depending on translation]. This person has said to be have an influence on the Essenes movement. Though if he is the master is still up in the air. Just not enough material.

If Yeishu really is "the Teacher of Righteousness", this would answer a lot of scholarly questions about the scattered references. Origen actually speaks about him in his rebuttal to Celsus when Celsus claims that he heard from a friend that Jesus ben Pantera was born of a woman named Mary who was raped by a Roman soldier named Pantera. Scholars now see this as a legend, but back in the 1st and 2nd century, it may have been seen as fact to some. There is also Talmudic reference to Yeishu. In the pristine version, it is said the Yeishu is the illegitimate son of a woman name Mary Magdala. It is said that he traveled around doing miracle work. He was considered by the temple authorities of the time to be a trouble making heretic, and when they had finally had enough of him, they put him on trial. Scholars find all this this interesting especially since the author of the Gospel of Mark never mentions Jesus' origin or Joseph.

My understanding is Joseph and Mary were Essenes and that Jesus was raised among them and according to their teachings.

The modern Essenes movement from what iver read, has no historical ties to the original movement [as stated by scholar J. Gordon Melton]. He states "Essene material is directly derivative of two occult best-sellers--The Aquarian Gospel of Jesus the Christ, by Levi H. Dowling; and The Mystical Life of Jesus, by Rosicrucian author H. Spencer Lewis."

So i guess scholars try to say it's the other way around. That there was a figure by the name of Jesus who influenced the Essenes and Christian movement.

*edit*

sorry if my thoughts seem a little scattered. im in a hurry to get somewhere and i wanted to respond with as much info as i could.

[Travis Clementsmith]

There's a book written by the scholar mentioned in the article titled The Mythmaker, which deals with this subject that I'd like to do in one of the Book Club reviews. Very good read.

-TC

[RHEMtron]

That's something i would love to read. Which scholar is the author?

[Travis Clementsmith]

Hyam Maccoby

[Fahad1]

Originally Posted by RHEMtron

excerpt from Rejection of Pascal's Wager

i know that was lengthy, but any thoughts?

This is what I was saying, no where in bible you will find a word "Christian" used for the followers of Bible and Jesus.

Qur'an mentions the followers of Islam as "muslims" so Bible should also mention the name of the "Christians" as the followers of the bible.

[gluadys]

Originally Posted by Fahad1

This is what I was saying, no where in bible you will find a word "Christian" used for the followers of Bible and Jesus.

Actually, you do. In Acts 11:25 The article is in error to say this term was used to describe the followers of Paul, though. For at this time, Paul was still using his Jewish name Saul and was subordinate to Barnabas as the leader of the church at Antioch. It was not until later that Paul became a principal leader of the church.

It is also to be noted that the church did not call itself "Christian". This was a name given them by outsiders. The early believers referred to their belief as "the Way" (Acts 24:14). Like "Christian" the term "Nazarene" probably came from outsiders, not from the believers themselves.

These skeptical articles often make me laugh. This one begins by saying "It would probably come as a shock to most Christians today that the original followers of Jesus were never called Christians." and then goes on to quote the passage in Acts where it says "It was in Antioch the disciples were first called 'Christians'". So why would it be a shock to learn what is plainly stated in our own scriptures?

[metis]

Originally Posted by RHEMtron

i know that was lengthy, but any thoughts?

Since there is so much here, I'm going to keep my comments very brief. Much of the article I agree with, but I'm mainly just going to focus in on that which is questionable. BTW, the two most common terms for this group were "the Way" and the "Followers of the Nazarene" (not just "Nazarines").

It would probably come as a shock to most Christians today that the original followers of Jesus were never called Christians. They were called Nazarenes... It was in Antioch that the words "Christian" was first used, to describe the followers of Paul! (Acts 11:25)

Not likely to be true. The term "Christian" was a name that was given to the movement by outsiders, and most scholars that I'm familiar with think it was a derogatory name that was eventually adopted to the movement sometime in the 2nd century.

Nazir means "a holy man of God". Nosri can mean "one who guards or watches over." All these possibilities goes to show that the original term for followers of Jesus was one that was heavily loaded with meanings which were different from the term "Christian".

One requirement of a nazir is the total avoidance of alcohol. If Jesus turned water into wine as alleged in the gospels at Cana, this would indicate he was not a nazir. Also, it appears that Jesus had taken on a liberal Pharisee approach that considered the letter of the Law to be less important than the direction of the Law, which is something a nazir would never agree with.

We find, even in Luke's largely reworked account of the Jerusalem council that James' leadership was implied. For it was he who decided on the issue with the words "I rule" or "My judgment is" (Acts 15:19). We find in Galatians the incident where Peter was ordered by James to stay away from the Gentiles (Galatians 2:12). It was James, who was the leader of the first church of Jesus in Jerusalem.

James' connection between the Ebionites and "the Way" is too difficult to call with any certainty of being correct. There's no doubt that James is having trouble with the rather loose interpretation of the Law, which would also be evidenced by Peter's actions btw, but there's the possibility (and I think the probability) that James eventually came around to that more liberal interpretation since he eventually becomes recognized as the leader of the apostolic group (not the Ebionites). However, I will not bet my house on this.

As the early Church Father, Hegesippus, relates, James was famous for his strict observance of the Jewish law and for undertaking vows which are normally taken only by the most devout Pharisee. [13] As James, Peter and, presumably, many of their followers knew the earthly Jesus, it is hard to imagine that these actions would be contrary to Jesus' teachings. It was more likely that they were doing what Jesus, when he was alive, commanded them to do... Despite Paul's attempts to bribe his way back with an offering of cash collection from his Gentile congregations, James and his church never accepted Paul back into the fold.

The scenario above is highly unlikely. Even though there is some dispute occurring over the issue of the Law, the fact that Paul had at least three conferences that we know of with the apostles would seem totally absurd if he's an outsider. Why would they meet with Paul and discuss anything with him if he was not somehow a part of them? Why are Paul's books in such wide circulation in the early church which is even attested to in at least one of the epistles? Why isn't there a single source that indicates that Paul is to be ignored and avoided?

When the Nazarenes were persecuted they were persecuted by the Sadducees, a sect already hostile to the Pharisees...The accusations made in Acts that the Pharisees persecuted the Nazarene are just as untrue as the similar accusations made in the gospels in connection with Jesus himself. The Pharisees had no reason to persecute the Nazarenes. They were not teaching any doctrine which was opposed to Pharisaic Judaism.

Jesus was also sharply questioned by many of the Pharisee leaders as well, and it appears that the main issue is dealing with the Law and how Jesus perceives it, especially the "oral law" and the "building a wall around the Torah" that most mainline Pharisees believed in. Also, the gospels also mention about Jesus at one point, and the apostles later, being kicked out of synagogues, which were Pharisee congregations that Sadducees generally avoided.

The beliefs of the Nazarenes (soon deprecatorily called the Ebionites-the poor ones-by the developing orthodox-catholic church) [19] were all we would have expected based on our earlier analysis of Jesus and his actual teachings. Their beliefs contradicted those of the Christians on many points.

We know very little about the Ebionites, but what we do know is that they were reluctant to take the liberal approach to the Law. And there are aspects of Jesus' teachings, if recorded accurately, that do violate at least the letter of the Law.

We know from Saint Jerome (c342-420) that the Nazarenes even have their own gospel in Aramaic, known as the Gospel of the Nazarenes or the Gospel of the Hebrews, which contained saying attributed to Jesus not found in the canonical gospels.

Actually we do not know if they survived much beyond the beginning of the 2nd century.

The few remaining believers declaring to the last man that Jesus was the messiah but not God and that Paul was a deceiver who taught his own theology, not Jesus'.

I'd love the author to provide a single source whereas Paul is specifically mentioned as a "deceiver" or words to that effect.

One man, Paul, took his name and expounded his own theology that developed the heretical doctrine which was called Christianity.

This makes no sense whatsoever for reasons previously mentioned, plus some others. The author is simply playing the "we/they" game and using Paul as a scapegoat for the "they". And what is most important is that the apostles were not involved with the Ebionites with the possible exception of James.



Sorry to be so brief, but we can talk about any one or more of what is being discussed here in more detail. The author's positions here on the church versus the Ebionites is quite shallow and highly overblown by all indications. Essentially, it's just another conspiracy theory.

BTW, just to mention that I am not a Christian.

[Mirage]

Thanks, Metis. That a wonderful assessment from a non-emotional position.

I think there is also a very common assumption going on that few ever seem to question, which is that people are assuming James held exactly the same views and taught the same things as Jesus. Even a cursory study of history shows that family members and descendants of leaders quite often do not handle things the same way. Indeed, we do not need to look to leaders and statesmen and kings to see this. We have only to look at corporate successions, people we know, etc. to see that siblings often seek to distinguish themselves as individuals, as do children from their parents. We can see a rather clear example of this today in the Bush family. Bush Sr and and his son seldom appear together, and the two have displayed very different military styles and tactics. Is it possible that James might have spent some of his life espousing personal and religious views that Jesus might not have shared? I think so. He comes across as a bit less liberal to me from what we know of him, but yes, he might have changed his mind.

I have a sister. We are quite close. We belong to the same general religious and political classifications, and read most of the same books, but I think if I asked her to replace me as Mirage, you would all notice immediately that the poster was not me. We have different styles, different viewpoints, and different emphases. For starters, she is much more cogent!

James was not Jesus. None of those left behind were Jesus. There's a very good chance I think that in the vacuum left by the execution of Jesus, the Way may have done quite a bit of evolving in a relatively short time. It has always puzzled me that most people (Spong excepted) do not ever seem to wonder whether the death of Jesus itself might have changed some of their views. Surely it was a painful and cathartic experience, one would assume. And this is not to say that they did not continue to love and admire Jesus, but their physical, emotional, and spiritual needs might have shifted during the almost inevitable soul searching which follows the violent death of any leader as those left behind try to pick up the pieces.

In American history, you can see a lot of interesting things occurred after the assassinations of both Lincoln and Kennedy. There was a great deal of grief and glamorization, and there were also a lot of things done in the names of the dead which it is impossible to know whether they would have liked. Often when a person dies, the rewriting starts at the funeral. At my father's funeral I was actually informed by several distraught and grieving people that he would have hated it, but we did exactly what his detailed written instructions requested. We cannot know how detailed any instructions Jesus left might have been, nor whether or not they were followed. Sometimes families do not follow such requests, that happens too. There is no way we will ever know what Jesus wanted James to do.