Nazarene'. An inhabitant of Nazareth. This appellative is applied to Jesus, in many passages in the New Testament. This name, made striking in so many ways, and which, if first given in scorn, was adopted and gloried in by the disciples, we are told in Matthew 2:23, possesses a prophetic significance.
Its application to Jesus, in consequence of the providential arrangements, by which his parents were led , to take up their abode in Nazareth, was the filling out of the predictions in which the promised Messiah is described as a netser, that is, a shoot, sprout, of Jesse, a humble and despised descendant of the decayed royal family. Once, Acts 24:5, the term, Nazarenes, is applied to the followers of Jesus, by way of contempt. The name still exists in Arabic, as the ordinary designation of Christians.