or NAZAREN, a term which signifies one who is of Nazareth, or any native of the city of Nazareth. It was given to Jesus Christ and his disciples, and is commonly employed in a sense of derision and contempt by those authors who have written against Christianity. It has also been applied to a sect of heretics called Nazarenes, who sprung up during the second century in Palestine. Their main peculiarity consisted in the imagined necessity of combining the Jewish ceremonial with the religion of Jesus Christ. They refer to a Hebrew Gospel of St Matthew; and the Christian fathers make frequent allusion in their writings to the Gospel of the Nazarenes. This gospel was preserved by them in its primitive purity; but the Ebionites, a contemporary sect which they intimately resembled, and with which they have been often confounded, afterwards corrupted this scripture to suit their own heretical opinions. Both sects seem to have died out before the fifth century. Sometimes Nazarite means one who has laid himself under the obligation of a vow to observe the rules of Nazariteship, whether it be for his whole life, as Samson and John the Baptist, or only for a time, as in the case of those mentioned in Numbers vi. 18, 19, 20; and Amos ii. 11, 12. Lastly, the name Nazarite denotes, according to some, a man of particular distinction and great dignity in the court of some prince. Nazir is the Hebrew word employed to designate the dignity of the patriarch Joseph (Gen. xlii. 26; Deut. xxxiii. 16); and Calmet mentions that this word is still applied to the chief minister of the crown in Persia. (See Carpzov, Appar., p. 151 sq.; p. 799, sq.; Roland, Antig. Sacr. ii. 10; Meinhard, De Naziris, Jen., 1676; Zorn, in Miscell. Lips. Nov. iv., 426, sq.; Spencer, De Leg. Heb. Rit. iii. 6; Dongtai, Analect. i. 37; Lucian, De Dea. Syr., c. 60; Mishna, Nasir.)