Magdalenbrother
January 8th 2005, 12:06 AM
In the Greek text of the New Testament, Jesus is called Nazoraios (http://(nazorios/) or Nazarenos, both of which are translated into English as "Nazarene". Only the first form of the Greek epithet of Jesus is used in the Gospel of John (18:5, 18:7, 19:9) and in Acts (2:22, 3:6, 4:10, 6:14, 22:8, 26:9), and it seems preferred in Matthew (2:23, 24:71) and Luke (18:37) as well. However, Mark consistently uses the second form of Jesus appellation, Nazorenos (Mark, 1:24, 14:67, 16:6), which makes appearances also in Luke (4:34, 24:19). The first epithet is also used once in Acts (24:5) to refer to the Christians when Tertullus the orator accuses Paul of being "a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes".
According to the writer of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus’s epithet, the Nazarene, is derived from the name of the town where he was brought up Nazareth or Nazaret: "And he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets: 'He will be called a Nazarene'." (Matthew, 2:23)
Indeed, while Nazorenos and Nazoraios are sometimes translated as "Nazarene", at other times they are rendered "of Nazareth". The Matthean etymology of Nazarene has been accepted by some scholars (e.g. Pellett, 1962: 525; Davies & Allison, 1988: 281), but a linguistic difficulty with this etymology has been pointed out. Some researchers have indicated that while deriving Nazarenos from Nazareth is not problematic, the same is not true of Nazoraios. In its entry for "Nazarene", Encyclopedia Britannica states that the exact meaning of this latter title is "not known". However, it has been claimed that, though difficult, it is not impossible for Nazoraios to have come from Nazareth (e.g. Moore, 1920: 428; Davies & Allison, 1988: 281). Cullmann has also pointed out that the spelling of the name of the home town of Jesus varies in the written tradition so it is not really possible to rule out the derivation of Nazoraios from Nazareth. He does, however, find it still unexplainable how "in Greek the unusual form Nazoraios maintained its position so consistently alongside the simpler for Nazarenos which was, after all, available." (Cullmann, 1962: 523)
There are other convincing reasons to reject the claim that Jesus was known by a title that meant "of Nazareth" which is how Matthew understood the word Nazarene. Nazareth is first mentioned in the New Testament and there is no older independent record that mentions that particular town. It is not mentioned in the Old Testament, the Talmud, the Midrashim or Josephus. The earliest mention of Nazareth outside the New Testament is from Julius Africanus (170-240 CE) which was cited by the bishop and historian Eusebius of Caesarea (d. ca. 340 CE). It is generally accepted that this absence of Nazareth from ancient historical records is due to the fact that it was a small, insignificant town (e.g. Pellett, 1962: 524; Moore, 1920: 429). The population of Nazareth is estimated from archaeological excavations to have been between 50-2000 at the time of Jesus (Theissen & Mertz, 1998: 165). This sounds quite possible. But then the obvious argument here is that if Nazareth was such an insignificant town then what sense would it have made to relate Jesus to it? After all, no person is introduced by relating him to a place that is equally unknown!
It is not only that Jesus could not have been related to an insignificant town such as Nazareth. The more fundamental problem lies in the very concept that Jesus could have been given a title after a city at all, even if it was a big and major city. Davies and Allison (1988: 281) have indicated that it was common custom among Jews to distinguish individuals according to the place of their origin. But then Jesus was by no means an ordinary person for this to apply to him.
The combination of the New Testament’s claim that Jesus was known with the title "Nazarene" and the Matthean etymology of this word has yet another insurmountable problem. We have already mentioned that Acts 24:5, as well as later writings, use the plural word "Nazarenes" to refer to the followers of Jesus. Now, even if we assume for the sake of argument that there was some sense in calling Jesus a Nazarene, having lived in Nazareth, it would certainly not make any sense at all to extend this title to his followers who would have come from various places. Needless to say, the followers of a Nazarene, in the Matthean sense of this word, do not become Nazarenes themselves! Cullmann for one has noted that if Nazarene meant someone from Nazareth, as Matthew has it, then "it would certainly be unusual if [the Christians] were referred to as 'people from Nazareth'" (Cullmann, 1962: 523). So, accepting the Matthean etymology of the word Nazarene as a title of Jesus is not really of much prudence as suggested by Davies and Allison (1988: 281).
In deriving Nazarene from Nazareth, the writer of the Gospel of Matthew cites a prophecy in the Old Testament:"And he [Joseph] arose, and took the young child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus did reign in Judaea in the room of his father Herod, he was afraid to go thither, notwithstanding, being warned of God in a dream, he turned aside into the parts of Galilee. 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, 2:21-23)
The Gospel writer has, in fact, been less than a reliable historian for the very simple reason that the prophecy that he cites occurs nowhere in the Old Testament! This false information undermines the credibility of the given etymology. Even neglecting the above problems with deriving Nazarene from Nazareth, this derivation still stands accused of having no foundation. There is really no reason to accept that Nazarene was derived from Nazareth rather than from a number of other possible origins (see, for instance, the possibilities compiled by Davies and Allison, 1988).
But there is another equally significant conclusion to draw from Matthew’s citation of a non-existent Biblical passage. Randel Helms (1989) has shown that the writers of the Gospels spared no effort in correlating Biblical passages with events in the life of Jesus to stress that Jesus was the fulfillment of those Biblical prophecies. But this attitude was so uncompromising that the history of Jesus was itself written in the Gospels to portray Jesus as the manifestation of those ancient Biblical sayings and prophecies. This suggests that in the case under discussion the reverse has happened. That is, as the title "Nazarene" was already in circulation, it was the correspondent Biblical passage that the Gospel writer needed to invent; and he did just that.
Now, how does one explain the erroneous etymology of Nazarene suggested in Matthew? It is certainly intertwined with the misconception of Nazarene as a title of Jesus. The writer of that particular Gospel, like the writers of the other books of the New Testament, authored his book decades after the time of Jesus. By then, the word "Nazarenes" was already a name of the followers of Jesus. But by that time many details of the religion of Jesus had already been lost. The historical background of the name of Jesus's followers, Nazarene, was one piece of information that had become unavailable to most people, including the writer of Matthew. However, Matthew reckoned that the similarity between the term Nazarene and the name of the town of Nazareth was too close to be fortuitous. So, he simply surmised that Nazarene must have originated from Nazareth, the name of the town where Jesus is supposed to have lived.
We now know that Nazarene was never derived from Nazareth. We also know that the similarity between Nazarene and Nazareth was not a mere coincidence, something that the writers of the Gospels have also noted. This leaves us with the very appealing conclusion that it is in fact Nazareth the town which acquired its name from the word "Nazarenes" and not the other way around as suggested in the New Testament. If that little town was indeed insignificant, as commonly accepted by scholars, then it could very easily have acquired the name "Nazareth" being the town "of the Nazarenes". This means that the town could have been mentioned in older sources under its old name. There is no evidence to support the suggestion of some researchers that the silence of ancient writings on Nazareth indicates that this town was only later established.
For simplicity's sake I have shortened a rather long article on the etymology of Nazarene. The whole essay, which is written from a Muslim point of view, can be found here:
http://bismikaallahuma.org/Jesus/Nasrani/nasrani.htm (http://bismikaallahuma.org/Jesus/Nasrani/nasrani.htm)
Here is another essay on the same subject:
In the New Testament book of Acts, Paul is tried in Caesarea, and Tertullus is reported as saying:
"We have, in fact, found this man a pestilent fellow, an agitator among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes" (Acts 24:5, New Revised Standard Version).
It is clear that "Christian" was not the earliest term for the followers of Jesus, since Acts 11:26 reports its first use in Antioch - at a time and in a place at least 10 and possibly 20 or more years after the death of Jesus.
Many authors have argued that "Nazarene" was not just one term that was used, but the dominant term, and that it was also used to describe Jesus himself. The chief argument for this claim rests on an interpretation of the way Jesus is referred to by the writers of the gospels. The original Greek forms of all four gospels call him, in places, "Iesou Nazarene" (e.g. Matthew 26:71; Mark 1:24, 10:47, 14:67; Luke 4:34; John 17:5; Acts 2:22).
Translations of the Bible, from the fifth century Vulgate on, have generally rendered this into a form equivalent to "Jesus of Nazareth." However, it is not the only possible translation. Linguistically, "Jesus the Nazarene" would be at least as correct, and some critics have argued that it is more plausible given that city of Nazareth seems to have not existed at the time of Jesus; it is unmentioned in any contemporary history and it is not possible to prove its early existence other than by reference to the gospels.
The Vulgate does use a form equivalent to "Nazarene" in one verse (Matthew 2:23), where its reading is Nazaroeus (Nazoraios), but here the original Greek has the word Nazarene on its own, without Iesou.
However we translate these verses from the gospels, the evidence from Acts 24 does support the claim that "Nazarene" was an early term for the followers of Jesus. But it does not appear to have been the term most used by those followers: the earliest Christian writings we have, the letters of Paul (which predate the gospels by ten to forty years), use the phrase "followers of the way" or, by far the most common, "the church."
Derivations of Nazarene
Regardless of these issues of translation, it seems clear that the term "Nazarenes" had at least some currency as a description of some followers of Jesus. What, therefore, does the word mean? The word Nazarene might come from at least four different sources:
1) The place-name Nazareth, via the Greek form Iesou Nazarene; this is the traditional interpretation within mainstream Christianity. In support of this interpretation is that Iesou Nazarene is applied to Jesus in the Gospels only by those who are outside the circle of his intimate friends, as would be natural if a place-name was meant. However in Acts it is employed by Peter and Paul, and attributed by Paul to the risen Christ (Acts, 22:8). Matthew 2:23 reads that "coming he dwelt in a city said by the prophets: That he shall be called a Nazarene," though no convincing identification of the prophecy concerned has been brought forward, the phrasing again strongly suggests that Matthew meant Nazarene to refer to a place name.
2) The word netzer meaning "branch" or "off-shoot." This could in turn refer to the claim that Jesus was a "descendant of David," or to the view that Jesus (or rather the teachings he or his followers advocated) were an offshoot from Judaism.
3) The word nosri which means "one who keeps (guard over)" or "one who observes".
4) The word nazir which refers to a man who is consecrated and bound by a vow to God, symbolized by avoiding cutting his hair, eating meat or drinking alcohol. Such a man is usually referred to as a Nazirite in English translations, and there are a number of references to Nazirites in the Old Testament.
None of these interpretations is unproblematic. It is therefore, quite possible that "Nazarene" was simply a deliberate play on words combining Nazirite with Essene.
Nazarenes: Jewish Christians
After the word "Christian" had become established as the standard term for the followers of Jesus, there appear to have been one or more groups calling themselves "Nazarenes", perhaps because they wished to lay claim to a more authentic and/or a more Jewish way of following Jesus.
Descriptions of groups with this title are given by the fourth century church father Epiphanius (flourished 370 CE), and Jerome. On the basis of their accounts, the Encyclopaedia Britannica of 1911 stated definitely that the name Nazarenes specifically identified an obscure Jewish-Christian sect, existing at the time of Epiphanius.
Epiphanius gives the more detailed, though thoroughly disapproving, description, calling the Nazarenes neither more nor less than Jews pure and simple. He mentions them in his Panarion (xxix. 7) as existing in Syria, Decapolis (Pella) and Basanitis (Cocabe).
According to Epiphanius they dated their settlement in Pella from the time of the flight of the Jewish Christians from Jerusalem, immediately before the siege in 70 CE. He describes them as those "...who accept Messiah in such a way that they do not cease to observe the old Law." Epiphanius adds, however, that they recognized the new covenant as well as the old, and believed in the resurrection, and in the one God and His Son Jesus Christ.
He cannot say whether their christological views were identical with those of Cerinthus and his followers, or whether they differed at all from his own.
Jerome (Epistle 79, to Augustine), on the other hand, says that though the Nazarenes believed in Christ the Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary, who suffered under Pontius Pilate, and rose again, desiring to be both Jews and Christians, they are neither the one nor the other.
They used the Aramaic Gospel of the Hebrews, also known as the Gospel of the Holy Twelve, but while adhering as far as possible to the Mosaic economy as regarded circumcision, Sabbaths, vegetarian foods and the like, they did refuse to recognize the apostolicity of Paul. (Jerome's Commentary on Isaiah, ix. I).
Jerome's description, taken along with the name (cf. Acts 24:5) and geographical position of the sect, strongly suggest that the Nazarenes of the 4th century interacted with the Ebionites in spite of Epiphanius' distinction.
Earlier church fathers such as Justin Martyr, Origen and Eusebius mention other groups who, to varying extent, accepted Jesus as Messiah while continuing to observe the Jewish Law. It is often suggested that these are the same as the groups identified by Jerome and Epiphanius as Nazarenes. One such group were the Ebionites, referred to in second century writings. There Epiphanius draws a comparative distinction between the Nazarenes and the Ebionites.
http://www.thenazareneway.com/what_is_a_nazarene.htm
According to the writer of the Gospel of Matthew, Jesus’s epithet, the Nazarene, is derived from the name of the town where he was brought up Nazareth or Nazaret: "And he went and lived in a town called Nazareth. So was fulfilled what was said through the prophets: 'He will be called a Nazarene'." (Matthew, 2:23)
Indeed, while Nazorenos and Nazoraios are sometimes translated as "Nazarene", at other times they are rendered "of Nazareth". The Matthean etymology of Nazarene has been accepted by some scholars (e.g. Pellett, 1962: 525; Davies & Allison, 1988: 281), but a linguistic difficulty with this etymology has been pointed out. Some researchers have indicated that while deriving Nazarenos from Nazareth is not problematic, the same is not true of Nazoraios. In its entry for "Nazarene", Encyclopedia Britannica states that the exact meaning of this latter title is "not known". However, it has been claimed that, though difficult, it is not impossible for Nazoraios to have come from Nazareth (e.g. Moore, 1920: 428; Davies & Allison, 1988: 281). Cullmann has also pointed out that the spelling of the name of the home town of Jesus varies in the written tradition so it is not really possible to rule out the derivation of Nazoraios from Nazareth. He does, however, find it still unexplainable how "in Greek the unusual form Nazoraios maintained its position so consistently alongside the simpler for Nazarenos which was, after all, available." (Cullmann, 1962: 523)
There are other convincing reasons to reject the claim that Jesus was known by a title that meant "of Nazareth" which is how Matthew understood the word Nazarene. Nazareth is first mentioned in the New Testament and there is no older independent record that mentions that particular town. It is not mentioned in the Old Testament, the Talmud, the Midrashim or Josephus. The earliest mention of Nazareth outside the New Testament is from Julius Africanus (170-240 CE) which was cited by the bishop and historian Eusebius of Caesarea (d. ca. 340 CE). It is generally accepted that this absence of Nazareth from ancient historical records is due to the fact that it was a small, insignificant town (e.g. Pellett, 1962: 524; Moore, 1920: 429). The population of Nazareth is estimated from archaeological excavations to have been between 50-2000 at the time of Jesus (Theissen & Mertz, 1998: 165). This sounds quite possible. But then the obvious argument here is that if Nazareth was such an insignificant town then what sense would it have made to relate Jesus to it? After all, no person is introduced by relating him to a place that is equally unknown!
It is not only that Jesus could not have been related to an insignificant town such as Nazareth. The more fundamental problem lies in the very concept that Jesus could have been given a title after a city at all, even if it was a big and major city. Davies and Allison (1988: 281) have indicated that it was common custom among Jews to distinguish individuals according to the place of their origin. But then Jesus was by no means an ordinary person for this to apply to him.
The combination of the New Testament’s claim that Jesus was known with the title "Nazarene" and the Matthean etymology of this word has yet another insurmountable problem. We have already mentioned that Acts 24:5, as well as later writings, use the plural word "Nazarenes" to refer to the followers of Jesus. Now, even if we assume for the sake of argument that there was some sense in calling Jesus a Nazarene, having lived in Nazareth, it would certainly not make any sense at all to extend this title to his followers who would have come from various places. Needless to say, the followers of a Nazarene, in the Matthean sense of this word, do not become Nazarenes themselves! Cullmann for one has noted that if Nazarene meant someone from Nazareth, as Matthew has it, then "it would certainly be unusual if [the Christians] were referred to as 'people from Nazareth'" (Cullmann, 1962: 523). So, accepting the Matthean etymology of the word Nazarene as a title of Jesus is not really of much prudence as suggested by Davies and Allison (1988: 281).
In deriving Nazarene from Nazareth, the writer of the Gospel of Matthew cites a prophecy in the Old Testament:"And he [Joseph] arose, and took the young child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus did reign in Judaea in the room of his father Herod, he was afraid to go thither, notwithstanding, being warned of God in a dream, he turned aside into the parts of Galilee. 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, 2:21-23)
The Gospel writer has, in fact, been less than a reliable historian for the very simple reason that the prophecy that he cites occurs nowhere in the Old Testament! This false information undermines the credibility of the given etymology. Even neglecting the above problems with deriving Nazarene from Nazareth, this derivation still stands accused of having no foundation. There is really no reason to accept that Nazarene was derived from Nazareth rather than from a number of other possible origins (see, for instance, the possibilities compiled by Davies and Allison, 1988).
But there is another equally significant conclusion to draw from Matthew’s citation of a non-existent Biblical passage. Randel Helms (1989) has shown that the writers of the Gospels spared no effort in correlating Biblical passages with events in the life of Jesus to stress that Jesus was the fulfillment of those Biblical prophecies. But this attitude was so uncompromising that the history of Jesus was itself written in the Gospels to portray Jesus as the manifestation of those ancient Biblical sayings and prophecies. This suggests that in the case under discussion the reverse has happened. That is, as the title "Nazarene" was already in circulation, it was the correspondent Biblical passage that the Gospel writer needed to invent; and he did just that.
Now, how does one explain the erroneous etymology of Nazarene suggested in Matthew? It is certainly intertwined with the misconception of Nazarene as a title of Jesus. The writer of that particular Gospel, like the writers of the other books of the New Testament, authored his book decades after the time of Jesus. By then, the word "Nazarenes" was already a name of the followers of Jesus. But by that time many details of the religion of Jesus had already been lost. The historical background of the name of Jesus's followers, Nazarene, was one piece of information that had become unavailable to most people, including the writer of Matthew. However, Matthew reckoned that the similarity between the term Nazarene and the name of the town of Nazareth was too close to be fortuitous. So, he simply surmised that Nazarene must have originated from Nazareth, the name of the town where Jesus is supposed to have lived.
We now know that Nazarene was never derived from Nazareth. We also know that the similarity between Nazarene and Nazareth was not a mere coincidence, something that the writers of the Gospels have also noted. This leaves us with the very appealing conclusion that it is in fact Nazareth the town which acquired its name from the word "Nazarenes" and not the other way around as suggested in the New Testament. If that little town was indeed insignificant, as commonly accepted by scholars, then it could very easily have acquired the name "Nazareth" being the town "of the Nazarenes". This means that the town could have been mentioned in older sources under its old name. There is no evidence to support the suggestion of some researchers that the silence of ancient writings on Nazareth indicates that this town was only later established.
For simplicity's sake I have shortened a rather long article on the etymology of Nazarene. The whole essay, which is written from a Muslim point of view, can be found here:
http://bismikaallahuma.org/Jesus/Nasrani/nasrani.htm (http://bismikaallahuma.org/Jesus/Nasrani/nasrani.htm)
Here is another essay on the same subject:
In the New Testament book of Acts, Paul is tried in Caesarea, and Tertullus is reported as saying:
"We have, in fact, found this man a pestilent fellow, an agitator among all the Jews throughout the world, and a ringleader of the sect of the Nazarenes" (Acts 24:5, New Revised Standard Version).
It is clear that "Christian" was not the earliest term for the followers of Jesus, since Acts 11:26 reports its first use in Antioch - at a time and in a place at least 10 and possibly 20 or more years after the death of Jesus.
Many authors have argued that "Nazarene" was not just one term that was used, but the dominant term, and that it was also used to describe Jesus himself. The chief argument for this claim rests on an interpretation of the way Jesus is referred to by the writers of the gospels. The original Greek forms of all four gospels call him, in places, "Iesou Nazarene" (e.g. Matthew 26:71; Mark 1:24, 10:47, 14:67; Luke 4:34; John 17:5; Acts 2:22).
Translations of the Bible, from the fifth century Vulgate on, have generally rendered this into a form equivalent to "Jesus of Nazareth." However, it is not the only possible translation. Linguistically, "Jesus the Nazarene" would be at least as correct, and some critics have argued that it is more plausible given that city of Nazareth seems to have not existed at the time of Jesus; it is unmentioned in any contemporary history and it is not possible to prove its early existence other than by reference to the gospels.
The Vulgate does use a form equivalent to "Nazarene" in one verse (Matthew 2:23), where its reading is Nazaroeus (Nazoraios), but here the original Greek has the word Nazarene on its own, without Iesou.
However we translate these verses from the gospels, the evidence from Acts 24 does support the claim that "Nazarene" was an early term for the followers of Jesus. But it does not appear to have been the term most used by those followers: the earliest Christian writings we have, the letters of Paul (which predate the gospels by ten to forty years), use the phrase "followers of the way" or, by far the most common, "the church."
Derivations of Nazarene
Regardless of these issues of translation, it seems clear that the term "Nazarenes" had at least some currency as a description of some followers of Jesus. What, therefore, does the word mean? The word Nazarene might come from at least four different sources:
1) The place-name Nazareth, via the Greek form Iesou Nazarene; this is the traditional interpretation within mainstream Christianity. In support of this interpretation is that Iesou Nazarene is applied to Jesus in the Gospels only by those who are outside the circle of his intimate friends, as would be natural if a place-name was meant. However in Acts it is employed by Peter and Paul, and attributed by Paul to the risen Christ (Acts, 22:8). Matthew 2:23 reads that "coming he dwelt in a city said by the prophets: That he shall be called a Nazarene," though no convincing identification of the prophecy concerned has been brought forward, the phrasing again strongly suggests that Matthew meant Nazarene to refer to a place name.
2) The word netzer meaning "branch" or "off-shoot." This could in turn refer to the claim that Jesus was a "descendant of David," or to the view that Jesus (or rather the teachings he or his followers advocated) were an offshoot from Judaism.
3) The word nosri which means "one who keeps (guard over)" or "one who observes".
4) The word nazir which refers to a man who is consecrated and bound by a vow to God, symbolized by avoiding cutting his hair, eating meat or drinking alcohol. Such a man is usually referred to as a Nazirite in English translations, and there are a number of references to Nazirites in the Old Testament.
None of these interpretations is unproblematic. It is therefore, quite possible that "Nazarene" was simply a deliberate play on words combining Nazirite with Essene.
Nazarenes: Jewish Christians
After the word "Christian" had become established as the standard term for the followers of Jesus, there appear to have been one or more groups calling themselves "Nazarenes", perhaps because they wished to lay claim to a more authentic and/or a more Jewish way of following Jesus.
Descriptions of groups with this title are given by the fourth century church father Epiphanius (flourished 370 CE), and Jerome. On the basis of their accounts, the Encyclopaedia Britannica of 1911 stated definitely that the name Nazarenes specifically identified an obscure Jewish-Christian sect, existing at the time of Epiphanius.
Epiphanius gives the more detailed, though thoroughly disapproving, description, calling the Nazarenes neither more nor less than Jews pure and simple. He mentions them in his Panarion (xxix. 7) as existing in Syria, Decapolis (Pella) and Basanitis (Cocabe).
According to Epiphanius they dated their settlement in Pella from the time of the flight of the Jewish Christians from Jerusalem, immediately before the siege in 70 CE. He describes them as those "...who accept Messiah in such a way that they do not cease to observe the old Law." Epiphanius adds, however, that they recognized the new covenant as well as the old, and believed in the resurrection, and in the one God and His Son Jesus Christ.
He cannot say whether their christological views were identical with those of Cerinthus and his followers, or whether they differed at all from his own.
Jerome (Epistle 79, to Augustine), on the other hand, says that though the Nazarenes believed in Christ the Son of God, born of the Virgin Mary, who suffered under Pontius Pilate, and rose again, desiring to be both Jews and Christians, they are neither the one nor the other.
They used the Aramaic Gospel of the Hebrews, also known as the Gospel of the Holy Twelve, but while adhering as far as possible to the Mosaic economy as regarded circumcision, Sabbaths, vegetarian foods and the like, they did refuse to recognize the apostolicity of Paul. (Jerome's Commentary on Isaiah, ix. I).
Jerome's description, taken along with the name (cf. Acts 24:5) and geographical position of the sect, strongly suggest that the Nazarenes of the 4th century interacted with the Ebionites in spite of Epiphanius' distinction.
Earlier church fathers such as Justin Martyr, Origen and Eusebius mention other groups who, to varying extent, accepted Jesus as Messiah while continuing to observe the Jewish Law. It is often suggested that these are the same as the groups identified by Jerome and Epiphanius as Nazarenes. One such group were the Ebionites, referred to in second century writings. There Epiphanius draws a comparative distinction between the Nazarenes and the Ebionites.
http://www.thenazareneway.com/what_is_a_nazarene.htm