Sources: Acts 24:5 (Paul called a “ringleader of the Nazarene sect”); Epiphanius, Panarion 29; Jerome, Letter 112; the Nazoraean Gospel fragments.

The Nazoreans (Nazoraeans, Nazarenes) are a Jewish-Christian group distinct from mainstream Christianity, maintaining Torah observance while accepting Jesus as the Messiah. Epiphanius (~374 AD) describes them as a community east of the Jordan in Perea and the Decapolis who used an Aramaic Gospel, observed the Sabbath, circumcision, and Jewish dietary laws, but also believed in the resurrection of Christ. They represent the direct continuation of the Jerusalem Church’s Jewish-Christian wing after 70 AD — the refugees who fled to Pella before the destruction of Jerusalem. Jerome knew a community in Beroea (Aleppo) that possessed the “Hebrew Gospel” (possibly the Gospel of Matthew in Hebrew or a related text). The Nazorean position — that faith in Jesus and Torah observance were not only compatible but obligatory — was condemned from both sides: by mainstream Christianity (which rejected Torah observance for Gentiles and eventually for Jewish Christians), and by rabbinic Judaism (which inserted the Birkat HaMinim to exclude them from synagogues). They represent the road not taken in early Christianity — a Jewish Christianity that might have developed into a third Abrahamic trajectory but was squeezed out by the hardening of boundaries on both sides after 70 AD.