A Jewish group of believers in Jesus which existed in and around Palestine from the first to fifth centuries. The Christians claimed that with the advent of Jesus, the era of the Mosaic Torah had ended and that Christianity had broken its link with Judaism to become a universal religion. The Nazarenes, in contrast, continued to adhere to the Mosaic Torah and considered themselves to be Jews. The Nazarenes split among themselves into a number of sects, the two largest being the Nazarenes, who saw Jesus as God and believed that the laws of the Torah are binding only on those who are Jews from birth; and the Ebionites, who saw Jesus as a man inspired by the holy spirit, and held that all believers in him must observe the Torah of Moses. Both the Nazarenes]and the Ebionites, especially the latter, tended to form communal groups who lived in the desert near the [GlossaryPlace, 1630016 | Dead Sea. They had an important role in the collection of the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, passing them on to the Christians. The Nazarenes' connections to the Jews were severed at the time of the Bar Kokhba revolt when they refused to participate in the war. They also broke their links with the Christians who attempted after the revolt of Bar Kokhba to emphasize the differences between their faith and Judaism.
