User:Tiamut/Nazareth name

More sources

 * The gospel of Jesus: in search of his original teachings
 * The Gospel of Philip states that Nazara means "the truth" and Nazarene means "the truthful one". The Arabic rendering of Nazarene is Nazara or Nasara, which means "a follower of the truth", and it is the term used in the Koran and by Arabs to refer to Christians.
 * lots more info too.
 * Exegetical Dictionary of the New Testament, Volume 2
 * Nazara is an Aramaic variant.
 * lots of other info on different forms in Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew.
 * Mark's gospel-- prior or posterior?: a reappraisal of the phenomenon of order
 * The Nazara of Luke is an Aramaic form.

Etymology

 * See also: Nazarene (title)

Biblical references
"Nazareth" is related to several words (Nazarene, Nazorean, Nazara, Nazaret, Nazarat, Nazarath) found in versions of the Christian New Testament. Nazara is generally considered the earliest form of the name in Greek, and is found in Matthew 4:13 and Luke 4:16, as well as the putative Q document, which many scholars maintain preceded 70 CE and the formation of the canonical Christian gospels. The fully developed form "Nazareth" appears once in the Gospel of Matthew (21:11), four times in the birth chapters of the Gospel of Luke (1:26; 2:4, 39, 51), and once in the Acts of the Apostles (10:38). In the Gospel of Mark, the name appears only once in 1:9 in the form Nazaret.

Extrabiblical references
The form Nazara is also found in the earliest non-scriptural reference to the town, a citation by Sextus Julius Africanus dated about 200 CE. (See "Middle Roman to Byzantine Periods" below.) The Church Father Origen (c. 185 to 254 CE) knows the forms Nazara and Nazaret. Later, Eusebius in his Onomasticon (translated by St. Jerome) also refers to the settlement as Nazara. The first non-Christian reference to Nazareth come from an inscription on a marble fragment for a synagogue found in Caesarea Maritima in 1962. This fragment gives the town's name in Hebrew as nun·tsade·resh·tav. The inscription dates as early as c. 300 CE and chronicles the assignment of priests that took place at some time after the Bar Kokhba revolt, 132-35 CE. (See "Middle Roman to Byzantine Periods" below.)

Semitic roots
One theory holds that "Nazareth" is derived from the Hebrew noun ne·tser, נֵ֫צֶר, meaning branch. Ne·tser is not the common Hebrew word for "branch," but one understood as a messianic title based on a passage in the Book of Isaiah. The negative references to Nazareth in the Gospel of John suggest that ancient Jews did not connect the town's name to prophecy. Alternatively, the name may derive from the verb na·tsar, נָצַר, "to watch," possibly a reference to a nearby hill with an outstanding view.

Another theory holds all the Greek forms of Nazareth derive from the Semitic root nun-zain-resh, as in the Nazir (Nazirite), a person consecrated to God either from birth (Samson, Samuel) or for a limited time. In Semitic languages, the name for Nazareth (nun-tsade-resh-tav) has an unvoiced sibilant in place of the voiced "z" sound. Voiced and unvoiced sounds follow different linguistic pathways, leading some scholars to question whether "Nazareth" and its cognates in the New Testament actually refer to the settlement we know traditionally as Nazareth in Lower Galilee. This skepticism is supported by the fact that some early texts locate the childhood home of Jesus in Judea, not in Galilee.

The Arabic name for Nazareth is al-nasira, and Jesus (known as Isa in Arabic) is also called al-nasiri, reflecting the Arab tradition of according people a nisba, a name denoting from whence a person comes in either geographical or tribal terms. In the Koran, Christians are referred to as nasara, meaning "followers of the Nazarene," or "those from Nazareth."