Nazarene´, an epithet constituting a part of one of the names given to our Lord. From the number of times that the epithet is employed, it appears that it became at the very first an appellation of our Lord, and was hence applied to designate his followers. Considering that the name was derived from the place where Jesus resided during the greater part of His life, we see no reason to think that at first it bore with it, in its application to Him or His followers, anything of an offensive nature. Such a designation was in this case natural and proper. In process of time, however, other influences came into operation. Nazareth was in Galilee, a part of Palestine which was held in disesteem for several reasons—its was a provincial dialect; lying remote from the capital, its inhabitants spoke a strange tongue, which was rough, harsh, and uncouth, having peculiar combinations of words, and words also peculiar to themselves; its population was impure, being made up not only of provincial Jews, but also of heathens of several sorts, Egyptians, Arabians, Phoenicians; its people were in an especial manner given to be seditious, which quality of character they not rarely displayed in the capital itself on occasion of the public festivals; whence may be seen the point of the accusation made against Paul, as 'ringleader of the sect of Nazarenes' (). As Galilee was a despised part of Palestine, so was Nazareth a despised part of Galilee, being a small, obscure, if not mean place. Accordingly its inhabitants were held in little consideration by other Galileans, and, of course, by those Jews who dwelt in Judea. Hence the name Nazarene came to bear with it a bad odor, and was nearly synonymous with a low, ignorant, and uncultured, if not un-Jewish person (Kuinoel, in ). It became accordingly a contemptuous designation and a term of reproach, and as such, as well as a mere epithet of description, it is used in the New Testament.
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John Kitto was an English biblical scholar of Cornish descent.Born in Plymouth, John Kitto was a sickly child, son of a Cornish stonemason. The drunkenness of his father and the poverty of his family meant that much of his childhood was spent in the workhouse. He had no more than three years of erratic and interrupted education. At the age of twelve John Kitto fell on his head from a rooftop, and became totally and permanently deaf. As a young man he suffered further tragedies, disappointments and much loneliness. His height was 4 ft 8 in, and his accident left him with an impaired sense of balance. He found consolation in browsing at bookstalls and reading any books that came his way.
From these hardships he was rescued by friends who became aware of his mental abilities and encouraged him to write topical articles for local newspapers, arranging eventually for him to work as an assistant in a local library. Here he continued to educate himself.
One of his benefactors was the Exeter dentist Anthony Norris Groves, who in 1824 offered him employment as a dental assistant. Living with the Groves family, Kitto was profoundly influenced by the practical Christian faith of his employer. In 1829 he accompanied Groves on his pioneering mission to Baghdad and served as tutor to Groves's two sons. In 1833 Kitto returned to England via Constantinople, accompanied by another member of the Groves mission, Francis William Newman. Shortly afterwards he married, and in due course had several children.
A London publisher asked Kitto to write up his travel journals for a series of articles in the Penny Magazine, a publication read at that time by a million people in Britain, reprinted in America and translated into French, German and Dutch. Other writing projects followed as readers enquired about his experiences in the East amidst people living in circumstances closely resembling those of Bible times.
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