Question Box - Good News Staff - July 1961

Good News Staff

Question: "Why do some believe that Christ was a nazarite and wore long hair?" Answer: Jesus was not a nazarite. Some have been misled by an erroneous interpretation of Matthew 2:23, "And he came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth: that it might be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, He shall be called a Nazarene." Many have concluded that this prophecy had to be a written prophecy recorded somewhere in the Old Testament. This is an unfounded assumption. Since they could not find anything in the Old Testament about Nazarenes, they guessed that some similar word must have been intended. Using this erroneous reasoning, they went one step further in their folly and assumed that this scripture was referring to the laws (NOT prophecy) about nazarites. - Information Supplied By: Herbert W Armstrong Library