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Nazarene ▢｜Definition｜1st｜20260822002005-00-⌔
Nazarene (title)
Nazarene, alternatively Nazorean, is a demonym for the people of the Biblical city of Nazareth, a title of Jesus as the Messiah, and a term for Christians as followers of Jesus.1 The intended Biblical significance of Nazareth is debated, with some analyzing “Nazarene” or “Nazorean” as mistranslations of a pre-Christian religious title without a geographic association.
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”.2 Both Nazarene and Nazorean are irregular in Greek and the additional vowel in Nazorean complicates any derivation from Nazareth.3 The Gospel of Matthew explains that the title Nazarene is derived from the prophecy “He will be called a Nazorean”,4 but this has no obvious Old Testament source. Some scholars argue that it refers to a passage in the Book of Isaiah,5 with Nazarene a Greek reading of the Hebrew ne·tser (‘branch’), understood as a messianic title.6 Others point to a passage in the Book of Judges which refers to Samson as a Nazirite, a word that is just one letter off from Nazarene in Greek.7 It is also possible that Nazorean signs Jesus as a ruler.8
The Greek New Testament uses Nazarene six times (Mark, Luke), while Nazorean is used 13 times (Matthew, Mark in some manuscripts, Luke, John, Acts). In the Book of Acts, Nazorean is used to refer to a follower of Jesus, i.e. a Christian, rather than an inhabitant of a town.9 Notzrim is the modern Hebrew word for Christians (No·tsri, נוֹצְרִי) and one of two words commonly used to mean ‘Christian’ in Syriac (Nasrani) and Arabic (Naṣrānī, نصراني).
Printed 2026-08-22.
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Link to original Footnotes
“Jesus was a Galilean from Nazareth, a village near Sepphoris, one of the two major cities of Galilee.” (“Jesus Christ”. Encyclopædia Britannica. Chicago. 2009.)
“[Jesus] spent His boyhood in the Galilean town of Nazareth.” (Bromiley, Geoffrey W., “Nazarene”, The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: K-P, pp. 499–500.) ↩See Luke 18:37 ↩
Bromiley, Geoffrey W., “Nazarene”, The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia: K-P, pp. 499–500. ↩
Matthew 2:22–23 ↩
“Isaiah 11:1 Then a shoot will spring up from the stump of Jesse, and a Branch from his roots will bear fruit”. biblehub.com. ↩
Miller, Fred P., “Isaiah’s Use of the word ‘Branch’ or”Nazarene” ↩
France, R. T., The Gospel of Matthew, pp. 92–93. See Judges 13:5–7. The Septuagint gives “Nazirite” as ναζιραῖον, while Matthew gives Nazorean as Ναζωραῖος. ↩
Berghorn, M., Die Genesis Jesu Christi aber war so. Die Herkunft Jesu nach dem matthäischen Prolog (Mt 1,1–4,16), Göttingen 2019 ↩
Acts 24:5 ↩
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