Nazarene Savior
Prophecy

Joseph Francis Alward
January 4,
1998

"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."

Matthew
2:23

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Matthew's
Story

Matthew says that it was foretold that the
savior would be from Nazareth and that he would be called a Nazarene. This
is disputed by skeptics: there are no verses in the Old Testament having
anything to do with Nazareth or Nazarenes, and no prophet ever said that a
savior would be called a nazarene. Skeptics are quick to point to this
omission as evidence that Matthew was just imagining that such a prophecy
existed. Joseph Wheless, writing in "Is
It God's Word" (page 246), is one of the better-known of these
skeptics:  "Jesus was, indeed, called a nazarene, which is the
hellenized form of the Hebrew 'notsri', which means 'offshoot', or
'branch', referring to an offshoot of Judaism. He may also have been
called a nazarene because the name "Nazareth" is arguably derived from the
Hebrew word 'neser', which means 'sprout or descendant.' "
[1]  We will show below, however, that
there is weak evidence to support Matthew's contention. We begin by
showing why Matthew thought that the prophets foretold that Jesus would be
called a nazarene, branch, or offshoot.

What Did the Word
Nazarene Mean?

Yariv Eyal [2] says that
Nazarene was the Hellenized form of the word meaning branch, or offshoot,
referring to a branch of Judaism:

Jesus was widely known to the
Israelites as Yeshu haNotsri in their language, which means Jesus the
Notsri. He is called this to this day, and his followers are called
Notsrim after him and his movement. The word nazarene is the Hellenized [3] form of notsri. Most of Yeshu's followers, either
uneducated Jews or non-Jews, didn't know why he was called Notsri or
what it meant. The word notsri, which is an adjective, comes from
netser, which means sprout or branch or offshoot. (See also, Romans
11:20-23) [4] Since Jesus was a member, or perhaps the
former member, of an offshoot group which sprouted off of mainstream
Judaism, he was called Jesus the Notsri. The Hebrew word for Christian
to this day is Notsri.

Luke, who allegedly wrote the book
of Acts, confirms the assertions, above, by Eyal. Luke tells us that a
nazarene was a member of a sect of outcast Jews:  "For we have found this man a pestilent fellow, and a mover of
sedition among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the
sect of the Nazarenes." (Acts
24:5)

Nothing in Old Testament
About Nazarenes

Nazarene and Nazareth are not mentioned in the
Old Testament, which makes sense, since there was no city called Nazareth
in the days of the prophets. There is, however, a reference to a class of
people called nazarites (Hebrew:
nazer, crown, referring a crown , the hair of a nazir), who made
themselves separate from ordinary human beings and devoted themselves to
the spiritual life [5]. Samson, whose long hair set him
apart from others, was the earliest known Nazarite. The reference in
question appears in Judges: "For, lo, thou
shalt...bear a son; and no razor shall come on his head: for the child shall be a Nazarite unto God from
the womb: and he shall begin to deliver Israel out of the hand of the
Philistines." (Judges
13:5)

Lest there be any doubt that the verses in
Judges refer to the legendary Samson, we hear the voice of a man with a
special vulnerability: "There hath not come a razor
upon mine head; for I have been a Nazarite unto God from my mother's womb:
if I be shaven, then my strength will go from me, and I shall become weak,
and be like any other man."  (Judges
16:17) Thus, we see that these nazarites had nothing to
do with the town of Nazareth or the name
Nazarene.

Did Matthew Believe Judges
Referred to Nazarenes?

Did Matthew believe that the Judges verse was a
prophecy about the savior nazarene? If so, this is how his mind might have
worked: Jesus was God, therefore his life is foretold in the Old
Testament. Jesus was from Nazareth (or so people believed), therefore his
Nazareth residency must somewhere be mentioned in the Old Testament.
Matthew scours the old scriptures for anything that looks like Nazareth,
and finds the nazarite passage in Judges. That must be it, he thinks.
Thus, according to this hypothetical scenario, a poorly-inspired Matthew
believed that the prophets foresaw that the son of god would be a called
Nazarene, which he thought meant "a resident of Nazareth". We know, of
course, that the Judges verses speak of an angel who is telling a women
she will bear a savior son, which turns out to be Samson the Nazarite, not
Jesus the Nazarene.

If Matthew wasn't referring to the nazarite
verses in Judges, perhaps he was thinking of the following verses in
Isaiah, which specifically refer to a person as a
branch:

The Old Testament Nazarene
Prophecy

And there shall come forth a
rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots:
And the spirit of the LORD shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and
understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge
and of the fear of the LORD; And shall make him of quick understanding
in the fear of the LORD: and he shall not judge after the sight of his
eyes, neither reprove after the hearing of his ears: But with
righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the
meek of the earth: and he shall smite the
earth: with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the
wicked. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins,
and faithfulness the girdle of his reins. .....for the earth shall be
full of the knowledge of the LORD, as the waters cover the sea. And in
that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign
of the people; to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be
glorious. (Isaiah
11:1-11)

It is hard to believe that Isaiah above was
referring to Jesus Christ, since he never "[smote] the earth" or "[slew]
the wicked". But, Isaiah had something which mitigates to Matthew's
benefit. In the verse below, Isaiah speaks of a root:

For he shall grow up before
him as a tender plant, and as root out of a dry
ground: he hath no form no comeliness; and when we shall see
him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and
rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief....he was
despised, and we esteemed him not. Surely he hath borne our griefs, and
carried our sorrows....he was wounded for our transgressions, he was
bruised for our iniquities...the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of
us all...he was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his
mouth; he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before
her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth...."(Isaiah
53:2-10)

This sound a lot more like
Jesus.

Conclusions

The author concludes that the Isaiah branch
verses (Isaiah 11:1-11, 53:2-10) were somewhat more likely to have been
the nazarene verses to which Matthew was referring than Judges' nazarite
verses. The Isaiah verses seemed flawed because they refer to deeds by the
savior which were not realized by Jesus, and the nazarite verses are
clearly flawed in that they refer to Samson and a class of people who were
more like latter-day hippies than saviors.

We therefore believe that there is no good
evidence to suggest that Matthew was clearly wrong when he said that the
prophets foretold that the savior would be called a nazarene. It is by no
means clear that the prophets had Jesus in mind, but until skeptics find
convincing evidence against Isaiah and Matthew, they should give them the
benefit of the doubt, in the author's opinion.

[1] Eerdman's Bible Dictionary, (1987), page
751.

[2] Yariv Eyal is a US born Israeli citizen.
Beside receiving a secular education, he was educated in orthodox Jewish
yeshivas in the US and Israel, and is fluent in Hebrew and English and has
taught Hebrew to new immigrants and Christian missionaries in
Israel.

[3] Greek word for Greece was "Hellas". The Age of
Hellenism was inaugurated during the reign of Alexander the Great; a
period of time during which the Greek language was spread. A hellenized
Hebrew word is a Hebrew word with a Greek-influenced new
spelling.

[4]   "Do not
be arrogant," he warned, "but be afraid. For if God did not spare the
natural branches (the Jewish people), he will not spare you either...And
if they do not persist in unbelief, they will be grafted in, for God is
able to graft them in again." (Romans 11:20-21,23)

[5] The Nazarite in ancient Israel has some of
the flavor of the monk in Christendom.  (Asimov's Guide to the Bible,
vol. I, pp. 248-249).