(March 7, 2015 at 2:11 am)Minimalist Wrote: More likely is that the author of mark was some Greco-Roman who mistook the word nazirite for nazareth and applied his own formulation.When you say Nazirite, I'm assuming you mean as described in this Wikipedia article ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazirite ). That doesn't fit IMO, because Jesus apparently drank wine and touched corpses.
I suspect there was a religious sect with a commune called Nazareth (branch). These people were hoping for a messiah from the branch of David. This is analogous to the Dunedain quietly preserving the heirs of Elendil until the right moment.