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Nazoreth vs. Nazorean
Judith:
You wrote:
> The Aramaic root is cognate with the Hebrew root N-TZ-R --
>likewise meaning to guard. If Jesus' group did call themselves "Guardians"
>this in Hebrew would be *notzerim* and in Aramaic something like *natorei*,
>and could easily appear in Greek as Nazoraioi. Later, when there WAS a
>city called Nazareth, it is easy to see how people could have imagined that
>Notzerim meant "Nazarenes", i.e., guys from Nazareth. BTW, the common
>confusion with Nazirites is just that -- a confusion -- the Greek zeta being
used >indiscriminately to render both the Hebrew letter tzaddi and the Hebrew
letter
>zayin.
The other day, during the chanting of the Thirteen Attributes, I found myself
wondering about the phrase "notzer chesed l'alafim" (sorry about my unacademic
inclusion of vowels) and how it might relate to notzer/notzrim. Is the verb
"guard" in precisely the same sense of "SH-M-R" or there a slightly different
connotation, even without the association with "chesed"?
Beruriah Bloom