Matthew ends the verse arguing that Jesus' life in Nazareth fulfilled a messianic prophecy, which he quotes: "He will be called a Nazarene." However, no such prophecy is found in the Old Testament, or any other extant source. Because of this, the verse has been much studied, and various theories have been advanced attempting to explain the enigmatic quote.
Nazareth was a small village unmentioned in any writings before this time, though there is some archeological evidence that a village existed in the area at the time of Jesus.[1] The word "town" is from the Greek polis, which is used both for a big city such as Jerusalem and quite small settlements.[2] Matthew gives no specific reason for why the family moved to this town except for the prophecy fulfillment and does not show any knowledge that Luke has them originally from there.[2] The town was near the Via Maris, the main road connecting to Egypt, and the route the family would have most likely been travelling.[3]
Clarke notes that Nazareth was just to the north of the larger centre of Sepphoris that had been largely destroyed in the violence after the death of Herod the Great. At this time it was being rebuilt by Herod Antipas, and Clarke speculates that this could have been a source of employment for a carpenter such as Joseph.[4] Nazareth could have had a population somewhere between 100 and 2000 people in the first century AD, and was quickly overshadowed by Sepphoris, which is only four miles away.[2]
Jerome indicates that Nazareth was used in reference to Old Testament verses using the Hebrew word ne'tser (branch), specifically citing Isaiah 11:1.[5] The Catholic Encyclopedia notes that, "The etymology of Nazara is netser, which means 'a shoot'. The Vulgate renders this word by flos, 'flower', in the Prophecy of Isaias (11:1), which is applied to the Saviour. St. Jerome (Epist., xlvi, 'Ad Marcellam') gives the same interpretation to the name of the town."[6]
Analysis
The difficulty with the brief quote "he will be called a Nazarene" is that it occurs nowhere in the Old Testamentprophets, or any other extant source. A number of theories have been advanced to explain this. At the time the canon was not firmly established and it is possible that Matthew is quoting some lost source, but all the other quotations in Matthew are from well known works, and if a quotation so closely linking Jesus’ hometown and the Messiah existed it would likely have been preserved.[7]
There is much debate, and many theories among scholars as to what the quote could mean. Scholars have searched through the Old Testament for passages that are similar. One popular suggestion is Judges 13:5 where of Samson it says "the child shall be a 'Nazirite'" (Hebrew: נזירnə-zîr;[8] LXX: ναζιραιος, naziraios).[9] A nazirite was a member of a sect who practiced asceticism, and the word has no known link to the name of the town. Jesus was not a nazirite and is never described as one.[lower-alpha 1]France also notes that Judges has "shall be" while Matthew has "shall be called", so if Matthew had been quoting Judges he would have retained the same form.[9]
Another theory is that it is based on Isaiah 53:2. This messianic reference states that "he grew up before him like a tender shoot." One of the Hebrew words for "shoot" is netser (Hebrew: נצרnê-ṣer;[10] cf. Isaiah 11:1), more similar to the word nazarene (Hebrew: נצריnetsri; Greek: Ναζωραῖος, Nazōraios[11]) than nazirite (נזירnezîr[8]). Keener notes that the term is used to refer to the Messiah in the Dead Sea Scrolls.[12] However this piece of wordplay is meaningless in Greek.[9] However, there are other wordplays in Matthew that only makes sense in the Hebrew. In 1:21, the angel says his name will be Ιησους because he will σωσει. This only makes sense based on the Hebrew ישׁוּע Yeshua from the verb ישׁע "to save." Goulder feels that the author of Matthew felt it essential that Jesus' hometown be justified in prophecy and he thus looked for the closest thing he could find, which was this verse.[13] However, the main problem with this argument is that the Hebrew word for "shoot" in verse 53:2 is not "natsir" but "yowneq" which further complicates the issue.
This verse refers to prophets in the plural, unlike all of Matthew's other references to known Old Testament prophets, which use the singular. This could imply that the wordplay and multiple interpretations was intentional. Rothfuchs reads the plural as the author of Matthew referring to all the quotes so far in the Gospel that directed the Holy Family in travels. To him the line is thus not a direct quote from the prophets, but the inevitable end the previous directions led to.
France states that Matthew sees Nazareth, as an obscure city, causes the term "Nazarene" to be understood as an insulting epithet (cf. John 1:46), an unflattering reference to Jesus' humble and obscure origins that was used by anti-Christians at the time.[14] The word is used in just such a way at Matthew 26:71.[14] Gundry point out that the wordplay netzer in Isaiah 11:1 conveys the same message by depicting the Messiah as a shoot from a cut-down stump to be a symbol of lowly origin, as so understood by the Jewish at that time.[15]
Pseudo-Chrysostom says that "They might have read this in some Prophets who are not in our canon, as Nathan or Esdras. That there was some prophecy to this purport is clear from what Philip says to Nathanael. Him of whom Moses in the Law and the Prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth. (John 1:45) Hence the Christians were at first called Nazarenes, at Antioch their name was changed to that of 'Christians.'" This may refer to Acts 24:5, where 'followers of Jesus the Nazarene' were grouped into "the sect of the Nazarenes",[16] an appellation that is also attested in the writing by Tertullian (Adv. Marc. 4.8).[17]
Commentary from the Church Fathers
Glossa Ordinaria: But then we might ask, why was he not afraid to go into Galilee, seeing Archelaus ruled there also? He could be better concealed in Nazareth than in Jerusalem, which was the capital of the kingdom, and where Archelaus was constantly resident.[18]
Chrysostom: And when he had once left the country of His birth, all the occurrences passed out of mind; the rage of persecution had been spent in Bethlehem and its neighbourhood. By choosing Nazareth therefore, Joseph both avoided danger, and returned to his country.[18]
Augustine: This may perhaps occur to some, that Matthew says His parents went with the Child Jesus to Galilee because they feared Archelaus, when it should seem most probable that they chose Galilee because Nazareth was their own city, as Luke has not forgot to mention. We must understand, that when the Angel in the vision in Egypt said to Joseph, Go into the land of Israel, Joseph understood the command to be that he should go straight into Judæa, that being properly the land of Israel. But finding Archelaus ruling there, he would not court the danger, as the land of Israel might be interpreted to extend to Galilee, which was inhabited by children of Israel. Or we may suppose His parents supposed that Christ should dwell no where but in Jerusalem, where was the temple of the Lord, and would have gone thither had not the fear of Archelaus hindered them. And they had not been commanded from God to dwell positively in Judæa, or Jerusalem, so as that they should have despised the fear of Archelaus, but only in the land of Israel generally, which they might understand of Galilee.[18]
Hilary of Poitiers: But the figurative interpretation holds good any way. Joseph represents the Apostles, to whom Christ is entrusted to be borne about. These, as though Herod were dead, that is, his people being destroyed in the Lord's passion, are commanded to preach the Gospel to the Jews; they are sent to the lost sheep of the house of Israel. But finding the seed of their hereditary unbelief still abiding, they fear and withdraw; admonished by a vision, to wit, seeing the Holy Ghost poured upon the Gentiles, they carry Christ to them.[18]
Rabanus Maurus: Or, we may apply it to the last times of the Jewish Church, when many Jews having turned to the preaching of Enoch and Elijah, the rest filled with the spirit of Antichrist shall fight against the faith. So that part of Judæa where Archelaus rules, signifies the followers of Antichrist; Nazareth of Galilee, whither Christ is conveyed, that part of the nation that shall embrace the faith. Galilee means ‘removal;’ Nazareth, ‘the flower of virtues;’ for the Church the more zealously she removes from the earthly to the heavenly, the more she abounds in the flower and fruit of virtues.[18]
Glossa Ordinaria: To this he adds the Prophet's testimony, saying, That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the Prophets, &c.[18]
Jerome: Had he meant to quote a particular text, he would not have written ‘Prophets,’ but ‘the Prophet.’ By thus using the plural he evidently does not take the words of anyone passage in Scripture, but the sense of the whole. Nazarene is interpreted ‘Holy,’ and that the Lord would be Holy, all Scripture testifies. Otherwise we may explain that it is found in Isaiah (c. 11:1.) rendered to the strict letter of the Hebrew. There shall come a Rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Nazarene shall grow out of His roots.[18]
Pseudo-Chrysostom: They might have read this in some Prophets who are not in our canon, as Nathan or Esdras. That there was some prophecy to this purport is clear from what Philip says to Nathanael. Him of whom Moses in the Law and the Prophets did write, Jesus of Nazareth. (John 1:45.) Hence the Christians were at first called Nazarenes, at Antioch their name was changed to that of ‘Christians.’[18]
Augustine: The whole of this history, from the account of the Magi inclusively, Luke omits. Let it be here noticed once for all, that each of the Evangelists writes as if he were giving a full and complete history, which omits nothing; where he really passes over anything, he continues his thread of history as if he had told all. Yet by a diligent comparison of their several narratives, we can be at no loss to know where to insert any particular that is mentioned by one and not by the other.[18]
Notes
↑ Quote: "… Matthew uses Nazōraios not naziraios, and that Jesus was never a nazirite anyway."[9]
Related Research Articles
The Nazarenes were an early Jewish Christian sect in first-century Judaism. The first use of the term is found in the Acts of the Apostles of the New Testament, where Paul the Apostle is accused of being a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes before the Roman procurator Antonius Felix at Caesarea Maritima by Tertullus. At that time, the term simply designated followers of Jesus of Nazareth, as the Hebrew term נוֹצְרִי, and the Arabic term نَصْرَانِي, still do.
Matthew 1:22 is the twenty-second verse of the first chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. Joseph has just been spoken to in a dream by an angel.
Matthew 2:6 is the sixth verse of the second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. The magi have informed King Herod that they had seen portents showing the birth of the King of the Jews. Herod has asked the leading Jewish religious figures about how to find out where Jesus was to be born. In this verse they tell him by quoting from the Book of Micah.
Matthew 2 is the second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. It describes the events after the birth of Jesus, the visit of the magi and the attempt by King Herod to kill the infant messiah, Joseph and his family's flight into Egypt, and their later return to live in Israel, settling in Nazareth.
Matthew 2:22 is the twenty-second verse of the second chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. The young Jesus and the Holy Family have just left Egypt after hearing of the death of King Herod.
Matthew 4:13 is the thirteenth verse of the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. In the previous verse, Jesus returned to Galilee after hearing of the arrest of John the Baptist. In this verse, he leaves from Nazareth to Capernaum.
Matthew 4:14–15 are the fourteenth and fifteenth verses of the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. In the previous verses Jesus returned to Galilee after hearing of the arrest of John the Baptist and then left Nazareth for Capernaum. These introduce and then contain the first portion of a quote from the Book of Isaiah showing how these movements were preordained by scripture.
Matthew 4:16 is the sixteenth verse of the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. In the previous verses Jesus returned to Galilee after hearing of the arrest of John the Baptist and then left Nazareth for Capernaum. This verse contains the second half of a quote from the Book of Isaiah, implying that these movements were preordained by scripture.
The flight into Egypt is a story recounted in the Gospel of Matthew and in New Testament apocrypha. Soon after the visit by the Magi, an angel appeared to Joseph in a dream telling him to flee to Egypt with Mary and the infant Jesus since King Herod would seek the child to kill him. The episode is frequently shown in art, as the final episode of the Nativity of Jesus in art, and was a common component in cycles of the Life of the Virgin as well as the Life of Christ. Within the narrative tradition, iconic representation of the "Rest on the Flight into Egypt" developed after the 14th century.
Matthew 5:1 and Matthew 5:2 are the first two verses of the fifth chapter of the Gospel of Matthew in the New Testament. The verses introduce the Sermon on the Mount that will be recited in the next several chapters. The previous chapter concluded with large crowds "from Galilee, and from the Decapolis, Jerusalem, Judea, and beyond the Jordan" who followed Jesus to witness him healing: these verses present Jesus as seeing the crowds and going up onto a mountain to begin teaching.
Luke 4 is the fourth chapter of the Gospel of Luke in the New Testament of the Christian Bible, traditionally attributed to Luke the Evangelist, a companion of Paul the Apostle on his missionary journeys. This chapter details Jesus' three temptations, the start of his "Galilean Ministry", and his rejection at Nazareth, which Luke contrasts with his acclaim in nearby Capernaum.
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The books of the New Testament frequently cite Jewish scripture to support the claim of the Early Christians that Jesus was the promised Jewish Messiah. Scholars have observed that few of these citations are actual predictions in context; the majority of these quotations and references are taken from the prophetic Book of Isaiah, but they range over the entire corpus of Jewish writings.
Nazarene is a title used to describe people from the city of Nazareth in the New Testament, and is a title applied to Jesus, who, according to the New Testament, grew up in Nazareth, a town in Galilee, now in northern Israel. The word is used to translate two related terms that appear in the Greek New Testament: Nazarēnos ('Nazarene') and Nazōraios ('Nazorean'). The phrases traditionally rendered as "Jesus of Nazareth" can also be translated as "Jesus the Nazarene" or "Jesus the Nazorean", and the title Nazarene may have a religious significance instead of denoting a place of origin. Both Nazarene and Nazorean are irregular in Greek and the additional vowel in Nazorean complicates any derivation from Nazareth.
The return of the family of Jesus to Nazareth, also known as the return from Egypt, appears in the reports of the early life of Jesus given in the canonical gospels. Both of the gospels which describe the nativity of Jesus agree that he was born in Bethlehem and then later moved with his family to live in Nazareth. The Gospel of Matthew describes how Joseph, Mary, and Jesus went to Egypt to escape from Herod the Great's slaughter of the baby boys in Bethlehem. Matthew does not mention Nazareth as being the previous home of Joseph and Mary; he says that Joseph was afraid to go to Judea because Herod Archelaus was ruling there and so the family went to Nazareth instead. The Gospel of Luke, on the other hand, does not record anything about the flight to Egypt, but says that Joseph had been previously living in Nazareth, and returned there after the Presentation of Jesus at the Temple.
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Isaiah 9 is the ninth chapter of the Book of Isaiah in the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. This book contains the prophecies attributed to the prophet Isaiah, and is one of the Nevi'im.
Isaiah 11 is the eleventh chapter of the Book of Isaiah in the Hebrew Bible or the Old Testament of the Christian Bible. This book contains prophesies attributed to the prophet Isaiah. This chapter can be divided into two main parts, verses 1–9 and verses 11–16, with verse 10 as a connecting statement between them. The New International Version entitles the chapter "The Branch from Jesse".
John 1:46 is the 46th verse in the first chapter of the Gospel of John in the New Testament of the Christian Bible.
↑ Harrington, Daniel J. The Gospel of Matthew. Liturgical Press, 1991 pg. 45
↑ Clarke, Howard W. The Gospel of Matthew and its Readers: A Historical Introduction to the First Gospel. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2003.
↑ Jerome, "Letter 57—To Pammachius on the Best Method of Translating": "Once more it is written in the pages of the same evangelist, 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. Let these word fanciers and nice critics of all composition tell us where they have read the words; and if they cannot, let me tell them that they are in Isaiah. For in the place where we read and translate, [Isaiah 11:1] There shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots, in the Hebrew idiom it is written thus, There shall come forth a rod out of the root of Jesse and a Nazarene shall grow from his root."
France, R.T. (2007). Bruce, Frederick Fyvie (ed.). The Gospel of Matthew. New international commentary on the New Testament. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. ISBN9780802825018.
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