Ray A. Pritz discusses in some depth the evidence extant for Nazarene Jewish Christianity (the title of his book, subtitled: “From the end of the New Testament Period Until Its Disappearances in the Fourth Century”). It was published 1988 so no doubt the scholarly discussion summarized by Pritz at that time has since moved on.
I post here the first of his discussions of a “pre-Christian” sect related to a name like “Nazarenes”. We know from Acts that early Christians were known (at least by outsiders) as Nazarenes — Acts 24:5.
I skip here the reasons (covered many times elsewhere) this term cannot refer (contrary to Matthew 2:23) to a person from the village of Nazareth. Maybe will do so in a future post. I only present Ray Pritz’s discussions, and the evidence he cites, for a pre-Christian group known as “Nazarenes” or something similar.
There are several topics better suited for my http://vridar.info webpage compilation of resources and discussions, and this is one of them. So I expect these blog posts will be rough templates for that site. It’s more of a resource post than a blog discussion/ideas post.
After this I will post on the evidence from Epiphanius and then Philastrius/Filaster (the English Wikipedia needs to have the two spellings linked to avoid 2 different articles!)
Note how in the concluding paragraph the presumption of a historical Jesus and gospel-truth shuts down one possible avenue of inquiry.
The following is copied from Pritz’s book pages 17-18. The italicized extract from Pliny is from an online translation (Perseus translation, 5:19). Pritz published it in the Latin. Emphasis is mine.
While treating the name of the sect, we may deal here with a short notice by Pliny the Elder which has caused some confusion among scholars. In his Historia Naturalis, Book V, he says: We must now speak of the interior of Syria. Cœle Syria has the town of Apamea, divided by the river Marsyas from the Tetrarchy of the Nazerini; Bambyx, the other name of which is Hierapolis, but by the Syrians called Mabog. This was written before 77 A.D., when the work was dedicated to Titus. The similarity of the name with the Nazerini has led many to conclude, erroneously, that this is an early (perhaps the earliest) witness to Christians (or Nazarenes) by a pagan writer. Other than this, be it noted, there is no pagan notice of Nazarenes.
The area described is quite specifically located by Pliny. It is south of Antioch and east of Laodicea (Latakiya) on the River Marysas (Orontes) below the mountains known today as Jebel el Ansariye (a name that may preserve a memory of the sect). The town of Apamea was a bishopric in the time of Sozomen and an archbishopric in the medieval period. A fortress was erected there during the first Crusade. Today the region is inhabited by the Nusairi Moslem sect (which believes that women will not be resurrected, since they do not have souls).
If to the Nazerini and Nusairi and Nazoraioi/Nazareni we add the Nasaraioi of Epiphanius and the Nazorei of Filaster, we have all the ingredients of a scholastic free-for-all.
The confusion may have started quite early. At the turn of this century, R. Dussaud noted a passage in the Ecclesiastical History of Sozomen (VII 15) in which he tells of some “Galileans” who helped the pagans of Apamea against the local bishop and the Christians. Dussaud rightly called into question the likelihood that the Galileans — that is, Jewish Christians — would side with the pagans in a dispute over the keeping of idols, and he suggested that the people referred to were “certainly either Nusairi or Nazerini, whom Sozomen has confused with the Nazarenes.” Sozomen’s source here is unknown. Dussaud further suggested that the writer Greg Aboulfaradj (Chron. Syr. I 173) in the year 891 confused the Nusairi with the Mandaeans . . . and was followed by others.
Can Pliny’s Nazerini be early Christians? The answer depends very much on the identification of his sources, and on this basis the answer must be an unequivocal No. It is generally acknowledged that Pliny drew heavily on official records and most likely on those drawn up by Marcus Agrippa (d. 12 B.C.). Jones has shown that this survey was accomplished between 30 and 20 B.C. Any connection between the Nazerini and the Nazarini must, therefore, be ruled out, and we must not attempt to line this up with Epiphanius’ Nazoraioi. One may, however, be allowed to see the Nazerini as the ancestors of today’s Nusairi, the inhabitants of the ethnic region captured some seven centuries later by the Moslems.
Neil Godfrey
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Price has a review of Ptitz’s book:
http://www.robertmprice.mindvendor.com/rev_pritz_nazarene.htm
This is a complicated subject. Eisenman also tries to make some sense out of it. I picture the situation this way:
The term “Nazoraean” may have been used in the first century to describe those of “The Way,” who were the Dead Sea Scrolls sect/Essenes who eventually evolved into James’ group.
They wrote some of the Dead Sea Scrolls, such as the pesharim and the Damascus Document, and called Paul the “liar.” Sometime after 70 CE they wrote the pro-James “Gospel of the Hebrews.” The earliest patristic sources call them Ebionites, who believed that Jesus was a man. The Gospel of the Hebrews was “Q,” and Mark is the Pauline gentiles’ first reaction to it. Paul had been influential enough to convert some of these Nazoraean Jews to his church, and they used the Gospel of the Hebrews (“Q”) and Mark as a source for Matthew (which believes in a virgin birth, like the Nazarenes), and Luke used it and Mark to create a somewhat later Pauline gentile reaction to it. By the time that patristic sources mention Pauline “Nazarenes,” there may have been some confusion of them with the Jamesian Ebionites. Both groups used “Matthew,” but the Ebionite’s version was said to be mutilated and incomplete, because it was “only” the “Q document.”
I didn’t see any mention in Pritz’ book (on Google books) of the Naassenes, but they further complicate the matter.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naassenes
I suggest looking into the possibility that this Jewish sect predated Christianity. This explains Acts 24:5; Christ and his disciples were considered by Jews at large as belonging to that marginal sect. It makes sense to me!
Maybe it is worth mentioning that the current Syrian regime is Alawite (aka Nusairis). However, the sect is generally understood to have been named after Mohammad Ibn Nusair, a 9th C. heretic. This connection is usually accepted by scholar, even by those who are aware of Pliny’s statement (see: Ency. of Islam, Brill 1995, vol 8, p 145). The statement is rather intriguing and worth perusing.
The name Jesus Christ never existed until Emperor Constantine and his collection of Religious leaders made it up in the 4th century- thus the Catholic(universal) church .Most of the Gospels were written by a Roman family named Piso.The joke is on you,because Christianity existed before Jesus Christ was invented!
I love how you TELL us it MUST be ruled out.
Although I see no reason Pliny wasn’t talking about the Nazarenes who definitely existed in that time, in fact it seems obvious he is writing in a different language and unfamiliar with the group it alludes to their existence.
Obviously not more than one group of Nazarenes existed so early and if you can’t identify them as anything else it’s logical to conclude and even from the quotes he was talking about the Jewish Nazarenes, whether or not his information about them is accurate.
Neil,
You might want to research the Mandaens, for your answer to who the “Nazarenes” were.
Contrary to church propaganda, they weren’t “Gnostic Christians”. They existed before the (fictional) “Passion” timeline.
✌🏻
Hi Tim. Yes, I have looked into the Mandeans fairly deeply and the best I have been able to see that the evidence allows anyone to establish is that their ideas/communities arose quite late in relation to Christianity, and often indirectly through Islam. It sounds odd to us in the Western nations, but Muslims call Christians something like “Nazarenes” even today.
I don’t know of any evidence that the birth of the Mandeans “before Christ”. Rather, they only appear in the early centuries following.
Didn’t look that deeply did you: https://vridar.org/2021/02/16/how-and-why-the-mandaeans-embraced-john-the-baptist/#comment-134349
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/minor-sects
I don’t know what you are trying to suggest or imply. Can you explain what message I am meant to take from the linked posts?
Gmirkin [who I agree with on this point]: “The Haran Gawaita indicates they emigrated to Mesopotamia under the Persian king Artabanus II (11-38 CE), I would say likely in 36-38 CE, which fits the NT chronology. I find the preservation of this specific historical context for their migration impossible to account for if not authentic.”
You say you ‘don’t know of any evidence that the birth of the Mandeans “before Christ”.’ Bit hard for the core group of people to emigrate east in the 30’s CE if they hadn’t originated in the decades before that. One or another of these fringe Hemerobaptist sects gave to tens of millions in the present day the procedures for ‘Wudu’ water ablution found in the hadith.
If you notice, even in the NT texts, John the Baptist (a Naṣuraiia) isn’t baptizing in Judea, or Israel for that matter. He is in Jordan (autonomous Decapolis, in the 1st century), on the east side of the Jordan River. The Transjordan was the “sacred” region of the Nasoreans, not Jews. It’s also where Jesus recruited the disciples.
There is also no historical basis for baptism in flowing water (which is what a Yardna, aka Jordan, is), in Judaism. Ritual cleansing took place in mikvahs, aka baths.
I also find it uncoincidental that the earliest archaeological evidence of “Christianity” comes from Dura Europus, Syria (Near the Iraqi border), & the earliest extant fragment of ANY NT text, is the Gospel of John, which heavily focuses on John the Baptist. (Mandaeism also has a Gospel of John, but of the Baptist, not an “evangelist”).
None of this is coincidental. Eusebius rewrote Nasorean history, to make it “Christian”, Greco-Roman, & very anti-Judaic, at the direction of the very anti-Semitic Constantine.
That’s also roughly the same time that the Nasorean drabsha became transformed to the Christian cross.
It is also important to understand that Nasoreans were vehemently against circumcision, unlike orthodox Jews. This is a major subject of the NT.
As Jews living amongst Greeks & Romans (especially in Galilee) were undergoing the new surgical procedure of “epispasm”, Nasoreans would have been the go-to sect, for Jews tossed out of the orthodoxy.
Zealot leaders like Jesus ben Sapphias, Simon bar Giora, John of Gischala, Niger of Perea, and the likes, would have easily recruited rebels, to simultaneously fight Romans, Greeks, & the Jewish priestly caste, for political, not religious, purposes, during the First Jewish War (66-73 CE).
How late do you see the Nazarenes surviving as a distinct sect? https://thegreatsecretofislam.files.wordpress.com/2021/09/21.09.10-making-sense-of-the-people-described-by-the-quran.pdf p.20 7th century Quranic Nazarenes
My approach is to rely on clear evidence directly supporting historical reconstructions. Much of what you have outlined is supposition, guesses, and the links and relations that you impose on the evidence are a kind of jig-saw approach to the evidence that I do reject.
What you cite as “coincidences” are not evidence. See https://vridar.org/historical-method-and-the-question-of-christian-origins/
“Mandaens” is a late identification of the religious group.
The priests were Nasuryii (Nasoreans, Nazoreans, Nazarenes, in Greek), and Mandaii (Mandeans) were the laity, in the Imperial Period.
They were also called Sabians, and “Harranian Hermeticists” (Harran, uncoincidentally being the the historical home of the Indo-Aryan Mitanni), Harranians, Subba, & Sabiun, to Arabic writers.
They are probably also the Sabaens of the Old Testament, as well, from Saba (biblical Sheba, presently Yemen). It is attested in Hebrew, Assyrian, & Greek sources.
That would date them to at least the 8th century BCE. There is some viability to their claim that they predate Judaism.
3 minutes later:
Where exactly do you get your “reliable evidence” of Nazarenes from?
I’ll wait…
10 mins later:
Sorry, but I rely on what the NT actually says the “Nazarenes” were, when attempting to identify the group.
The actual Greek word used was Nazoraioi, not Nazaraioi. They were Nasoreans, not Nazarenes, nor Nazirite Jews.
Nazareth didn’t even exist in 1st century Galilee. So, you are basing your entire “reliable evidence” on a biblical myth, to discount the extra-biblical evidence.
some minutes later:
And the archaeological evidence already disproves the entire “biblical Jesus” myth, so I don’t even know why you attached this.
If you believe that Pontius Pilatus was actually the Senatorial Procurator of Judea (which you have stated), than you haven’t been keeping up with the “reliable evidence”, and starting from a false preposition.
You need to go outside of the biblical tales.
some minutes later again:
So, the archaeological evidence is not “clear” to you? Just a coincidence, also, that there is ZERO archaeological evidence for ANY pre-3rd century Christianity? And ALL the earliest evidence comes from Syria, not Israel?
It seems more like you have an answer in mind, and are looking for evidence to support it, at the expense of the actual archaeological record.
Just curious, do you believe the archaeological record?
and again:
“Mandaens” is a late identification of the religious group.
The priests were Nasuryii (Nasoreans, Nazoreans, Nazarenes, in Greek), and Mandaii (Mandeans) were the laity, in the Imperial Period.
They were also called Sabians, and “Harranian Hermeticists” (Harran, uncoincidentally being the the historical home of the Indo-Aryan Mitanni), Harranians, Subba, & Sabiun, to Arabic writers.
They are probably also the Sabaens of the Old Testament, as well, from Saba (biblical Sheba, presently Yemen). It is attested in Hebrew, Assyrian, & Greek sources.
That would date them to at least the 8th century BCE. There is some viability to their claim that they predate Judaism.
and finally:
Thank You!
Common sense seems to have been lost on this topic. ✌🏻
an hour or so later:
The Essenes (not to be confused with the Essenes of Ephesus) were from Essa (Jerash) in Jordan, the same place as the Nasoreans (“Nazarenes”). Josephus uniquely called it Essebonitus.
ALL of these groups were hemerobaptists, and not from Israel, but east of the Jordan River, and predate Christianity.
I cannot understand how Neil fails to grasp that concept.
I have collated Tim Bryant’s gush of comments into one post so they do not take over the discussion space. Tim — you have not been banned; everyone can read your comments here. But I have put you on moderation. Read the comments policy before posting again.
I apologize. I’ll keep it to a minimum. ✌🏻
That’s fine. But I’d rather you keep it to the point of the posts and where you disagree write with a little less attitude. You have jumped in with totally wrong assertions about my views and you make wild leaps from the actual evidence to make claims about religious groups that cannot be supported.
Every name you used represents the same group. They were Gnostic Jews, that later became identified (by Christian authors) as Mandaens (possibly tied to the Mandei region of India). The Nasoreans were the priests, & the Mandaiia were the lay people.
They existed in the Near East & Mesopotamia well before “Christianity”, & claiming to pre-exist the Jews (which IS chronically possible).
The “erroneous” proposition, is that “Christians” predate the Nasoreans. That’s a historical fallacy, perpetrated by the propaganda of Eusebius (who wasn’t a Christian bishop. He was Constantine’s Praepositus sacri cubiculi).
This was probably from Eusebius referencing Aristotle & Megasthenes, who both claimed that the Jews were of Vedic origin (probably associating them with the Vedic Mitanni & Kassites, of
Bronze Age Syria). The Vedic deity Yahvah is frequently referenced in the Rigveda.
This is one of those Occum’s Razor discussions, which has been deluded by Early Church propaganda. ✌🏻
My approach is to rely on clear evidence directly supporting historical reconstructions. Much of what you have outlined is supposition, guesses, and the links and relations that you impose on the evidence are a kind of jig-saw approach to the evidence that I do reject. That jig-saw approach is a free-wheeling way of doing things that any cult, any ideology, any conspiracy theorist, any whatever can do to make the evidence tell the story that they want.