The label Nazorean/Nazarene derives from the Hebrew NTZR, meaning ‘to keep, watch or guard’, and ‘branch’.
The label was applied to a Jewish messianic movement and to Jesus and James, who were members.
The movement was distinct from the sect Paul formed, that subsequently became known as Christians.
References to Nazareth, in association with the term Nazarene, were used by the writer of Matthew to detract from identifying Jesus with the Nazoreans movement.
The reference that Jesus lived in Nazareth was retrospectively inserted into the gospel of Mark.
The New Testament indicates that Jesus lived in Capernaum and unlikely to have ever lived in Nazareth.
Why do Christian churches claim that Jesus lived in Nazareth, when he was supposedly born in Bethlehem and lived in Galilee? Archaeological evidence suggests that Nazareth was not even a town at the time of Christ, but a place called Natzrat, which was a settlement formed some 67 years after the birth of Christ. Today, Nazareth does exist and is some 25 miles south from Capernaum, a town on the shore of Galilee.
Jesus and his brothers were associated with a Jewish sect called the Essenes, and within this group was a sub-group called the Nazarenes, which meant ‘keepers of the covenant’. Some scholars claim that the Nazarenes were the military arm of the Essenes, but were not fanatical militants like the zealots. Historians Philo, Milman, Tytler and Kersey Graves, record that the Essenes doctrine closely paralleled the Buddhist school of Pythagoras in Alexandria, Egypt.
The term Nazoraeans also means ‘fishers’, which was applied to the evangelic pre-Christian sect, but had nothing to do with the Nazareans, although both were generic terms for early Christians. The group’s symbol was the fish—widely seen in many Roman catacombs—only replaced by the cross in the 4th century. Epiphanies mentions a pre-Christian group in the Holy Land as ‘Nasaraioi’, which derives from the Egyptian word for ‘fishes’. The Bible makes a thinly veiled attempt to disassociate Jesus as a member of the Nazarene movement, claiming that he lived in Nazareth.
Matthew 2:23 states: ‘And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, he shall be called a Nazarene’. However, there are no references in the Old Testament to this ‘prophecy’, or a link to Nazareth.
David Pratt provides a telling explanation of this confusion.
The Hebrew name for Christians has always been ‘notzrim’, and although modern Christians claim that Christianity only started in the 1st century CE, the first century Christians in Palestine considered themselves to be a continuation of the notzri movement, which had existed for some 150 years. In the rabbinical tradition, Jeshu ben Pandera is also called Jeshu ha-Notzri (Jesus the Nazar). The Greek equivalent to notzri is ‘nazoraios’. The word means ‘to keep oneself separate’, an indication of the ascetic nature of this sect. The early Christians conjectured that nazoraios (variously rendered as Nazar/Nazarite, Nazorean or Nazarene) meant a person from Nazareth, and it was assumed that Jesus lived in Nazareth. The expression ‘Jesus of Nazareth’ is therefore a mistranslation of ‘Jeshu ha-Notzri.
Similarly, Pilate placed on the cross the words ‘Jesus the Nazorean’, associated with the title King of the Jews. This was not a reference that Jesus lived in Nazareth, but ‘here is the leader of the Nazoreans, executed for claiming to be King of the Jews’.
All Bible references place Jesus (Mark 2, 1; 3, 20), his family (Mark 3, 21) and supporters (Mark 1, 29) living in Capernaum. There is nothing in Mark, which is the earliest written gospel, to indicate why Jesus might have moved from his home to Nazareth, a town that did not even exist in his time. Nazarene or Nazorean was not just a term of reference for the Jewish followers of James. It had also been applied to Paul, inasmuch as he was associated with that group. The group was widely associated with Jewish religious zealotry, messianism, nationalism, and anti-Roman sentiment. For failing to take part in the second Jewish revolt that began in 132 CE, the Nazareans were persecuted by their fellow Jews. But they were not persecuted 50 years earlier because they were part of a wider messianic movement. They had upheld the sanctity of the temple, deplored the intrusion of foreigners, and fought on the zealot side. The writer of the Matthew gospel wanted to disassociate Jesus from being leader of a fiercely Jewish messianic Nazarene movement by a lame attempt to suggest that he lived in Nazareth.
References:
The Invention of Jesus by Peter Cresswell, Watkins Publishing, 2013
They Lied to us in Sunday School by Ian Ross Vayro, Joshua Books, 2006