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Bible Dictionaries
Nazarene
1910 New Catholic Dictionary
or
1) A native or inhabitant of Nazareth of Galilee, especially applied to Jesus Christ.
2) A follower of Christ, often applied in contempt; a Judaizing sect of early Christians, who have a text of Matthew's Gospel in the Aramaic language.
3) A member of a small and unimportant heretical sect of trinitarian Christians, originating in Hungary, which rejected Transubstantiation, infant Baptism, and the priesthood.
4) A member of a school of German painters, who in the last century endeavored to restore Christian art to its pristine spirituality, without considerable effects.
Though Nazareth was a priest-center in the Old Covenant, it had no national or religious status; it could be called a country village. Jesus Christ's citizenship of Nazareth offered his detractors a motive to hurl contempt at him. According to Matthew 2,23, Nazarene, as a title of Christ, was foretold by the Prophets. No text of the Prophets announced that the Messias was to belong to Nazareth and was to be called a Nazarene for that reason. It is possible that Saint Matthew saw a connection between the name Nazarene and the Hebrew word nezer, which in Isaias 11:1, is translated branch or shoot. Saint Matthew's word may be the Greek equivalent of nazûrâ, the Aramaic equivalent to the Hebrew nezer. Some have confounded Nazarene with Nazarite, and have falsely concluded that Saint Matthew's text refers to Christ's mortified holy life. However, the title may be regarded by Saint Matthew as fulfilling the prophecies that He would be lowly and despised by His own people (Isaiah 53).
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Entry for 'Nazarene'. 1910 New Catholic Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/ncd/n/nazarene.html. 1910.
