Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 17.djvu/315

N A Z N E A 303 must have been an obscure place l in the time of Jesus, for we find no mention of it outside of the New Testament till Eusebius and Jerome identify it with a " village " which undoubtedly occupied the place of the modern Nasira. In Jerome s time it was already visited by pilgrims, but as yet we hear nothing of relics or places associated with special incidents in the life of Jesus. The population was mainly Jewish, exclusively so, we are told by Epiphanius, down to the time of Constantine, and the Jews, after their manner in modern as in ancient times, seem to have been the inventors of various marvellous relics and identi fications which were palmed off upon Christian pilgrims in the 6th century. Such at least is the natural inference from what Antoninus Martyr tells of these wonderfully friendly and communicative Hebrews. A century later Arculphus describes two great churches corresponding to the modern Greek church over the Virgin s Well and the Latin church of the Franciscan monastery over the Grotto of the Annunciation. The place has since passed through various vicissitudes ; it was most flourishing in the time of the crusaders, who transferred to it the bishopric of Scythopolis. The Ottomans at length expelled the Christians ; but the Franciscans established themselves under the protection of Fakhr al-Dm in 1620. The town has now a Greek, a Latin, and a Moslem quarter, as well as a Protestant mission and orphanage. The population is variously estimated at from 6000 to 10,000. The Virgin s Well, just outside the town, must have been fre quented by the women of ancient as of modern Nazareth ; all the other traditional sites are highly dubious. But this hardly affects the interest attaching to the town, for the character of Nazareth must at all times have depended on its position and surroundings. It was a little country town of peasants and handicraftsmen, nestling in olive groves and green meadows, separated and yet not distant from the busy life of the greater Galilsean cities, surrounded on all sides by the pleasantest landscapes of Canaan. The hill above the town commands one of the finest views in Galilee, from Hermon to Mount Carmel. NAZARITE, or NAZIRITE (1^), was the name among the Hebrews for a peculiar kind of devotee. The character istic marks of a Nazarite were unshorn locks and abstinence from wine (Judg. xiii. 5; 1 Sam. i. 11 ; Amos ii. 11, 12); full regulations for the legal observance of the Nazarite vow are given in Numb, vi., where every product of the grape-vine is forbidden, and the Nazarite is further enjoined to abstain from approaching a dead body, even if it be that of his nearest relative. The law in question is not pre- exilic, and is plainly directed to the regulation of a known usage. It contemplates the assumption of the vow for a limited period, and gives particular details as to the atoning ceremonies at the sanctuary by which the vow must be recommenced if broken by accidental defilement, and the closing sacrifice, at which the Nazarite, on the expiry of his vow, cuts off his hair and burns it on the altar, thus return ing to ordinary life. Among the later Jews the Nazarite vow of course corresponded with "the legal ordinance, which was further developed by the scribes in their usual manner (Mishna, Nazir ; comp. 1 Mac. iii. 49; Acts i. 23 sq.; Joseph., Ant., xix. 6, 1 ; Id., B. J., ii. 15, 1). On the other hand, in the earliest historical case, that of Samson, and in the similar case of Samuel (who, however, is not called a Nazarite), the head remains unshorn throughout life, and in these times the ceremonial observances as to uncleanness must have been less precise. Samson s mother is forbidden to eat unclean things during pregnancy, but Samson him- 1 Even the form of the name is uncertain, Na^ape r, Naape 0, Naapa. These variations are intelligible in a Hebrew or Syriac name with fern, termination, but hardly enable us to fix the original form. In Syriac and Arabic the is transcribed as sharp s ; thus the root of the name Nazareth would be N-S-R, and so many ancients and moderns suppose that in Matt. ii. 23 the prophecy referred to is that of the Branch (neser) in Isa. xi. 1, self touches the carcase of a lion and is often in contact with the slain. 2 In the cases of Samuel and Samson the unshorn locks are a mark of consecration to God (DTI^N TT3, Judg. xiii. 5) for a particular service, in the one case the service of the sanctuary, in the other the deliverance of Israel from the Philistines. Since, moreover, the Hebrew root N-Z-B is only dialectically different from N-D-R, "to vow," both corresponding to the same original Semitic root (Arabic N-DH-R), it would seem that the peculiar marks of the Nazarite are primarily no more than the usual sign thai a man is under a vow of some kind. To leave the locks unshorn during an arduous undertaking in which the divine aid was specially implored, and to consecrate the hair after success, was a practice among various ancient nations, of which examples may be seen in Spencer, De Legibus Heb., iii. 1, cap. 6 ; but the closest parallel to the Hebrew custom is found in Arabia. There the vow was generally one of war or revenge (Hamdsa, p. 167 ; Antara, MoaL, 1. 74; Moh. in Medina, p. 201), and till it was accom plished the man who vowed left his hair unshorn and unkempt, and abstained from wine, women, ointment, and perfume. Such is the figure of Shanfara as described in his Ldtniya. The observances of the ihrdm belong to the same usage (see vol. xv. p. 674), and ve find that at Taif it was customary to shear the hair at the sanctuary after a journey (Moh. in Medina, p. 381). The affinity between the Arabian usage and a case like that of Samson is obvious, and the consecration of Samuel has also its Arabic parallel in the dedication of an unborn child by its mother to the service of the Ka ba (Ibn Hisham, p. 76 ; Azraki, p. 128) ; but we have not sufficient data to enable us to trace the further development of the Nazarite vow among the Hebrews. The spirit of warlike patriotism that character ized the old religion of Israel could scarcely fail to encour age such vows (comp. 2 Sam. xi. 11, and perhaps 1 Sam. xxi. 4, 5), and from the allusion in Amos we are led to suppose that at one time the Nazarites had an importance perhaps even an organization parallel to that of the prophets, while on the other hand the Canaanized popular religion of the 8th century B.C. made light of an institu tion that belonged to a very different religious type from Canaanite nature worship. The Nazarites as they appear in Amos have another parallel in the Rechabites. NEAL, DANIEL (1678-1743), author of the History of the Puritans, was born in London in December 1678. He received his early education at Merchant Taylors School and at a Dissenting academy, after which he went to Holland and studied some time at the universities of Utrecht and Leyden. In 1704 he became assistant- minister of the Independent congregation of Aldersgate Street, London, and in 1706 sole pastor. In 1720 he published in two volumes a History of New England, which reached a second edition in 1747. His occasional printed sermons also assisted to increase his reputation among Nonconformists, and it was at the request of several influential co-religionists that he undertook to write a History of the Puritans, the first volume, which commenced with the Reformation in England, appearing in 1732, and the fourth, bringing the narrative down to the Act of Toleration of 1689, in 1738. The History was attacked for unfairness and misstatements by Bishop Maddox, to whom Neal replied in a pamphlet entitled A Review of the Principal Facts objected to the first volume of the History of the Puritans. The conscientious accuracy of Neal is indeed beyond praise, although he was undoubtedly strongly prepossessed in favour of his own side of the question, 2 John the Baptist is a later example of life-long consecration, Luke i. 15. Compare also the tradition as to James the Just, vol. xiii. p. 553.