NAZARENES

Christian heretics, so called. This name was originally given to all Christians in general, because Jesus Christ was of the city of Nazareth. But afterwards it was restrained to a sect of heretics, who affected to a ume it rather than that of Christians. Their religion was a strange jumble of Judaism and Christianity: for they were Jews by birth, were circumcised, kept the sabbath, and other observances of the Mosaical law; and at the same time received the New Testament as well as the Old, acknowledged Jesus Christ to be the Me iah , and practised the Christian baptism. Theodoret indeed pretends they honoured Jesus Christ only as a just and good man; and he places the beginning of their heresy about the time of Domitian. St. Augustine makes them the succe ors of those whose obstinacy in the like opinions was condemned by the apostolical Council of Jerusalem. The Nazarenes (as well as the Ebionites) were descended from those Christians, who left Jerusalem a little before the siege, and retired to the country about Jordan, called Perea; whence they are sometimes called Peratics. There were some of them remaining in the time of St. Augustine. They dwelt about Pella in Dec a polis, near the river Jordan, and at Berea, a city of Lower Syria. They perfectly understood the Hebrew tongue, in which they read the books of the Old Testament. These heretics, keeping the mean between the Jews and the Christians, pretended to be friends alike to both: neverthele , the Christians treated them as abominable heretics, and the Jews detested them more than the other Christians, because they acknowledged Jesus Christ to be the Me iah . Epiphanius says, they cursed and anathematized them three times a day in their synagogues.— Brought on.