JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS

 Reflection on the Word for the Sunday of January 22, 2023
JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS  (INRI)
Matthew 4:12-13
“ Now when Jesus heard that John was delivered up, he withdrew into Galilee. Leaving NAZARETH, he came and lived in Capernaum, which is by the sea, in the region of Zebulun and Naphtali.”
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For a long time some people complained that the envoy of the Roman Empire, governor Pontius Pilate should not have been included in the Apostle’s Creed, as the very person who signed the death sentence on Jesus earthly life. Nonetheless, it was Pilate, according to the Gospel, who was seeking to release him, by saying that he found no basis for a charge against him. Pilate took water and washed his hands, saying, I am innocent of the blood of this righteous person. And very famously, Pontius Pilate also worded the title tag on the cross, by writing that this is “JESUS OF NAZARETH, THE KING OF THE JEWS.”

It is more than interesting that although most of the Bible translations in English read Jesus of Nazareth, but not all of them, because the original-ish Greek version of the Gospel of John 19:19 says in Greek, that ἦν δὲ γεγραμμένον· Ἰησοῦς ὁ Ναζωραῖος ὁ βασιλεὺς τῶν Ἰουδαίων, which means, that there  was written on the cross that: Jesus the Nazarene, the King of the Jews.

Thus, the term is mistranslated into Jesus of Nazareth, because it should have translated into English as Jesus the Nazarene.
It might have been not always thoroughly scrutinized and analyzed, concluded and understood that Jesus real name is not Jesus Christ, because the very term of ' Christ ' is a title. It eventually means Jesus the Messiah, or as Pontius Pilate phrased it, King Jesus.

However, in ancient Judea most people were called only by their first names, or when it was needed by further identification they used a patronymic name, like Simon Peter’s legal name was Simon ben Jonah, which means that Simon, the son of Jonah.
 
It was also a widely practiced habit to give people nicknames in such a population, where the first names they used were very common and always overlapping. Jesus, himself, told his stumbling Apostle, that Simon ben Jonah, your name will be Kephas, which means the Rock, and it was a nickname.

Names like Simon, Yacov (James), Jochanan, John,  were very frequent. Among the disciples there were two Simons, two Jameses and two Judases. So it just happened that Jesus also named his two other disciples, the members of his inner circle, John and James, the sons of the Boanerges, which means the sons of the Thunder, as they used to be very fast to get angry and having a snappy behavior in general. These were the same two, who asked the permission of Jesus to pray that may God utterly destroy the unwelcoming Samaritan town by firestones.
The other name-giving habits were when they nicknamed people after they hometown, using toponyms, like Erasmus the great philosopher was known as the Rotterdamer, who in the early 16th century involuntarily paved the way for Protestant ideas, albeit being a Catholic Priest, as well. His full name was Desiderius Erasmus Roterodamus in Latin or in simple English Erasmus of Rotterdam. He was also called the Prince of the Humanists, meanwhile he helped print new editions of the Greek speaking New Testament.
We can recall that Jesus is still called not only Jesus Christ in vernacular English but also Jesus of Nazareth, referring to his home town. However, most researchers agree, that when the Greek speaking Gospel mentions his toponymic name, Nazareth, it has always, almost the same spelling like in English, but when it comes to the term of Jesus of Nazareth, the original Greek is almost always Iesus ho Nazoraios, which means Jesus the Nazarene and not exactly Jesus of Nazareth.

For a great reason, like the ongoing Roman persecution against the Nazarenes, the well known first century Jewish religious group, and an offshoot of the Essenes, to which John the Baptist and Jesus both belonged, the Gospel of Matthew tries to put a little life-saving explanation in the text regarding the very much acknowledged fact that Jesus was seen even by Pontius Pilate, the administrative authority, as Jesus the Nazarene, as Jesus was known widely and officially by that name.  

The Gospel of Matthew wrote in chapter 2, that “ … when Herod was dead, (…) Joseph arose and took the young child and his mother, and came into the land of Israel. But when he heard that Archelaus was reigning over Judea in the place of his father, Herod, he was afraid to go there. Being warned in a dream, he withdrew into the region of Galilee, and came and lived in a city called Nazareth; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through the prophets that he will be called a Nazarene. ”

Meanwhile, it is clear that the Nazarenes were an identifiable religious sect among the first century Jews, the archaeological findings do not support that the very town of Nazareth had existed at all before the second century CE, in an era, way after Jesus had been crucified.

The Jewish Nazarenes and the early gentile Christian congregations in Syria and elsewhere had not been on very friendly terms, as the Nazarenes kept almost all the Jewish customs, including the dietary laws and the circumcision, meanwhile the gentile Jesus follower Christians were advised by the Apostle Paul, that they are not required to keep the Jewish Law, in order to be saved and redeemed by faith in Jesus. It became very soon a bitter competition.

After the fall of Jerusalem and the destruction of the Temple of God, the Greek speaking gentile Christianity take the lead and the early influence of the Nazarenes and the Jerusalem congregation faded from memory.

In this context, the Greek speaking compiler of the Gospel of Matthew could have seen feasible to tell the Greek speaking gentile audience that Jesus was called a Nazarene only, because he is from the town of Nazareth.

However, the Gospel of Matthew is still right of seeing the connection between the Nazarene baptizing movement and the town of Nazareth. Because more than likely it began as a sizable Nazarene settlement, practically a core of the later developing town.

Thus, Nazareth as a town grew out from the Nazarene movement, got its name out of it, and in a sense, especially in a hindsight from the second century and later when the Gospels were finalized, the town of Nazareth had been already a reality. Nonetheless, not only the town of Nazareth emerged from the Nazarene movement, but the wholeness of the world wide Christianity.

Jews were the ones who accepted the call of the Lord in the Book of the Jewish prophet Isaiah, that go to the Judean desert and prepare the way of the Lord. The Jewish John the Baptist began to the baptize the people, and that baptizing was entirily a Jewish purification ritual. The Jewish Christ Jesus died and resurrected for the people, the Jewish Apostles, including Paul, obeyed the Master's commissioning, written at the and of the Gosple of Matthew, "to go all nations" and to make the Good News heard.

Without the Nazarenes there is no Nazareth, without the preparing Nazarenes there is no Christianity, as it is written by Isaiah that the teaching shall go out of Zion, and the Lord’s word from Jerusalem, as Jesus doubled it down that for salvation is from the Jews.  

The Gospels made it happen that the name of the way preparing Nazarenes, incorporated into the very name of Jesus the Nazarene, will be never forgotten.

May the Lord be blessed that all the promises of God came alive by the Holy Spirit, and it kept alive in the hearts of the always renewing generations, until this world will end and beyond, when God will renew everything, AMEN.

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