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Notzrim

Notzrim (נוצרים), refers to the elagabalite "בני ישראל דברים אשר לא כן על י**ה א**יהם" (Sons of Israel who did things secretly which were not right against the L**D their G-d) as described in 2 Kings 17:9 also mentioned in 2 Kings 18. The singular form is Notzri. They call themselves Nāṣorāyi. Pliny the Elder calling them Nazerini indicates[1] that they lived not far from Apamea, in Syria in a city called Bambyx, Hierapolis or Mabog. Epiphanius called them Nasaraeans in Panarion 1:18. Not much is known about the Notzrim before the 1st century BCE when Pliny the Elder mentioned a people called the "Nazerini" in his Historia Naturalis (Book V,22).[2]

This people has no connection to either Tertullus' description of Paul, nor to the later 4th Century Nazarenes[3]

Mandaeans

Main article: Mandaeans

Bernard Duborg (1987) dates Pliny's source between 30 and 20 BCE and, accounting for the lapse of time required for the installation in Syria of a sect born in Israel/Judea, suggests the presence of a Nasoraean current around 50 BCE. Dubourg connects Pliny's Nazerini with early Christians.[4] This identifies them with the Jewish traditions about Rav Joshua ben Perachiya's student who turned to the worship of the Baetylus with the Elagabalites among whom he established the Mandaeans of Jordan according to the Kuzari.

John the Baptist made great efforts to correct Ha-Notzri's Elagabalite Baptists and became very popular with them but in the end his message was corrupted.

The Mandaeans of Iraq use the term "Nasorean" in their history, the Haran Gawaitha, to describe their origins in, and migration from Jerusalem: "And sixty thousand Nasoreans abandoned the Sign of the Seven and entered the Median Hills, a place where we were free from domination by all other races."...[5]

Theories on the origins of the Mandaeans have varied widely. During the 19th Century Wilhelm Bousset, Richard Reitzenstein and Rudolf Bultmann argued that the Mandaeans were pre-Christian, as a parallel of Bultmann's theory that Gnosticism predated the Gospel of John.[6] Hans Lietzmann (1930) countered with the argument that all extant texts could be explained by a 7th Century exposure to, and conversion to, an oriental form of Christianity, taking on such Christian rituals as a Sunday Sabbath.

Scholars of Mandaeans considered them to be of pre-Christian origin, however no evidence for this is found prior to the second century.[7] They claim John the Baptist as a member (and onetime leader) of their sect; the River Jordan is a central feature of their doctrine of baptism.[8] However, in the 1960s, Christian scholars of Mandaeism settled on an early Jerusalem, but not pre-Christian, origin.[9][10]

Alawaites

Pritz, following Dussaud, connects Pliny's 1st century BCE Gnostic Nazerini, to the 9th century CE Gnostic Nusairis.{cite}

Toledot Yeshu, "History of Yeshu"

Main article: Toledot Yeshu

The medieval rabbinical text Toledoth Yeshu is a polemical account of the origins of Christianity which connects the "notzrim" "watchmen" (Jeremiah 31:16) of Samaria. The Toledot Yeshu identifies the leader of the "notzrim" during the reign of Alexander Jannaeus as a rebellious student mentioned in the Baraitas (traditions outside the Mishnah) as "Yeshu ha-Notzri".{cite} Yeshu ha-Notzri is depicted as living circa 100 BCE.[11] According to the Toledot Yeshu the Notzrim flourished during the reign of the Hasmonean queen Alexandra Helene Salome among Hellenized supporters of Rome in Judea.[12]

Medieval usage

The term "Notzrim" continued to be used of "Christians" in the medieval period. Hasdai Crescas, one of the most influential Jewish philosophers in the last years of Muslim rule in Spain,[13] wrote a refutation of Christian principles in Catalan which survives as Sefer Bittul 'Iqqarei ha-Notzrim (Refutation of Christian Principles).[14]

Modern Hebrew usage

Thanks to the infestation of Christianity with the followers of a Notzri called Yeshu HaNotzri, the words Notzri & Notzrim have become the modern Hebrew standard term for "Christian" and "Christians".[15] Hence, Notzrim is an alternative term, used to translate the Greek Christianoi in many translations of the New Testament into Hebrew, and distinguished from Meshiykhiyyim "Messianics" (משיחיים).[16]

In Modern Hebrew, the word "Notzrim" (נוצרים) is the standard modern word for Christians, but Meshiykhiyyim ('משיחיים) is used by many Christians of themselves, as in the BFBS New Testament of Franz Delitzsch; 1 Peter 4:16 "Yet if any suffer as ha-Meshiykhiyyim (משיחיים), let them not be ashamed, but let them glorify God in that name."[17][18] In the Hebrew New Testament Tertullus' use of "Nazarenes" (Acts 24:5) is translated "Notzrim", and "Jesus of Nazareth" is translated "Yeshu ha Notzri".[19]

Possible relation to other groups

Notzrim frequently claim identification with the Scions (Netzarim) of the House of Jesse, the watchmen of Mount Ephraim in Samaria (Jeremiah 31:16) called Nasara in Arabic.

See also

References

  1. ↑ Pliny the Elder, Natural Histories Book V, recopying reports drafted by Marcus Agrippa on the orders of Emperor Octavian Augustus Caesar.
  2. ↑ Plinii naturalis historia: Libri I-VII ed. Francesco Della Corte - 1984 "Nunc interiora dicantur. Coele habet Apameam Marsya amne divisam a Nazerinorum tetrarchia, Bambycen quae alio nomine ... In Cele si trova Apamea, divisa dalla tetrarchia dei Nazerini dal fiume Marsia, Bambice, che con altro nome..."
  3. ↑ Ray Pritz Nazarene Jewish Christianity: from the end of the New Testament 1988 p17 Pliny's Nazerini - 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. .... 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 for Augustus by Marcus Agrippa (d. 12 BC).[31] Jones has shown that this survey was accomplished between 30 and 20 BC [32] Any connection between the Nazerini and the Nazareni must, therefore, be ruled out, and we must not attempt to line this up with Epiphanius' Nazoraioi. [33]"
  4. ↑ B. Dubourg, L'Invention de Jesus, Gallimard Paris 1987, II, p. 157.
  5. ↑ Karen L. King What is Gnosticism? 2005 Page 140
  6. ↑ Edwin M. Yamauchi Gnostic ethics and Mandaean origins 2004 - Page 8 "C. The Age of the Mandaean Sect Against the claims of Reitzenstein and Bultmann that the Mandaeans dated to the pre-Christian period"
  7. ↑ Etudes mithriaques 1978 p545 Jacques Duchesne-Guillemin "The conviction of the leading Mandaean scholars — E. S. Drower, Kurt Rudolph, Rudolph Macuch — that Mandaeanism had a pre-Christian origin rests largely upon the subjective evaluation of parallels between Mandaean texts and the Gospel of John."
  8. ↑ Drower, Introduction, p. xiv
  9. ↑ King "Many specialists in Mandaean studies still argue for an early Western origin for Mandaeanism, preeminent among them Rudolf Macuch, Lady Drower, Kurt Rudolph, and Lupieri, but they generally reject a pre-Christian date and argue for great circumspection in using Mandaean texts to explain the genesis of New Testament literature.91 "
  10. ↑ Edmondo Lupieri The Mandaeans: the last gnostics 2002
  11. ↑ {{#invoke:citation/CS1|citation |CitationClass=web }}
  12. ↑ Goldstein, M. Jesus in the Jewish Tradition, Macmillan 1950 (pp. 148-154 Toledot Y.S.W.)
  13. ↑ The Columbia History of Western Philosophy p204 ed. Richard H. Popkin, Stephen F. Brown, David Carr - 2005 "In the last century of Jewish life in Spain, the three most influential Jewish philosophers were without doubt Rabbi Hasdai Crescas (ca. 1340-1410/1411), Rabbi Joseph Albo (d. after 1433), and Rabbi Isaac Abrabanel (1437-1508)."
  14. ↑ History of Jewish Philosophy p551 ed. Daniel H. Frank, Oliver Leaman - 2004 "translation of Joseph ibn Shem Tov who entitled it Sefer Bittul 'Iqqarei ha-Notzrim (Refutation of Christian Principles)."
  15. ↑ "Christian adj. n. נוצרי " (Notzri) The Oxford English-Hebrew Dictionary (9780198601722) 1999 p.69; The New Bantam-Megiddo Hebrew & English Dictionary, Dr. Sivan Reuven, Dr. Edward A. Levenston, 2009 p.50; Ben Yehuda's Hebrew Dictionary, 1940 reprint, p.450
  16. ↑ United Bible Societies Hebrew New Testament, 1997 printing, based on the BFBS New Testament of Franz Delitzsch: Acts 11:26, Acts 26:28, 1 Peter 4:16.
  17. ↑ BFBS Delitszch translation 1 Peter pdf
  18. ↑ example: The Christian Church, Jaffa Tel-Aviv website article in Hebrew יהודים משיחיים - יהודים או נוצרים?
  19. ↑ United Bible Societies Hebrew New Testament, 1997 printing, based on the BFBS New Testament of Franz Delitzsch: Acts 24:5

Further reading

  • Drower, E. S., The Secret Adam: A Study of Nasoraean Gnosis, Clarendon Press, Oxford (1960)
  • The Ante-Nicene Fathers (1986 American Edition), vol. viii, Wm. B. Eerdmans Publ. Co., Grand Rapids, Michigan.

pt:Notzrim

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