Nazarean — Memoir and meaning together

Nazorean: How a Jewish Wisdom Sect Gave Birth to the Church
Kem Luther
Wipf and Stock
310 Pages, 6.00 x 9.00 x 0.62 in
Paperback 9798385225972
Published: August 2024
kem.luther@gmail.com

I acknowledge the risk in recommending a book I have not read. Knowing the author, his interests and some of his personal story I will take such a chance.

Kem Luther is a writer. At the time of his retirement from a career in teaching philosophy and computer science, he was dean of the joint University of Toronto/Sheridan college program in communication, culture, and information technology. His books include Cottonwood Roots (1993) and Boundary Layer (2016).

Ken Luther spent time in evangelical circles in his younger years, an experience never to be forgotten but one which required further distiallation, intellectual travel, and life experience. His faith journey sounds much like my own, so I will do my part, compare notes, and report back at a future point.

[From Wipf and Stock Publisher notes] A swirl of Jewish sectarian movements muddied the religious waters during the late Second Temple period. In recent decades, scholars of the Bible have struggled to understand the role these sects played in the rise and spread of the Jesus movement. Nazorean joins this wave of sectarian scholarship. In this book, Kem Luther sketches the history of a wisdom-oriented sect that gave birth to the Christian church. Weaving a series of what the philosopher and historian R. G. Collingwood called “webs of imaginative construction,” he provides a provocative and plausible story about a wisdom sect–the Nazoreans–that shaped the career and teachings of John the Baptist and Jesus.

To support his scenario, Luther offers sectarian readings of passages from the Gospels of Matthew and John, the Epistle of James, Acts, the Wisdom of Solomon, and the Psalms of Solomon. He links his developing awareness of the sectarian context of these documents to his own trek through a landscape of post-1960 American religion.

The candid account of Ken’s own journey through a naive modernism, his immersion in evangelical subculture at a Bible school, and his postgraduate studies in mysticism and philosophy makes a fascinating complement to his textual studies. “After seven books on topics ranging through natural history, social history, and linguistics, I have returned to my roots for my eighth book. Nazorean is my first attempt to come to terms with my religious background and context.”

While the book is somewhat academic in tone (yes, footnotes and all that) and framed as a contribution to the scholarly quest for the historical Jesus, it is also personal. For several years, in my late adolescence, I was a part of the American evangelical movement. I tell about this experience at the beginning of Nazorean. In later chapters of the book, I use what I learned in this period of my life as a backboard, a surface against which I bounce some of my thoughts and explore how they have changed. You can read an excerpt on the publisher’s site that contains this autobiographical introduction.

John Gram, contributor, International Greek New Testament Project provided his own endorsement: “Kem Luther’s Nazorean is both personal and scholarly. He makes clear his own presuppositions and how he has arrived at them, writing with honesty and gentle humor. Luther invites his readers to consider how we write history and the possibilities of ‘imaginative construction’ in uncovering influences on John the Baptist, Jesus, and his followers within the matrix of Second Temple Judaism. The result could be insights that have been hiding in plain sight.”

Nazorean can be ordered through its publisher, Wipf and Stock. The book will also be available in some local (Victoria and area) bookstores. Even if it is not on their shelves, it can always be ordered through them (and encourage the bookstore to add it to their stock).

For those who choose not to use bookstore services, Nazorean can be purchased online from Amazon US, Amazon Canada, or the other Amazon national outlets. Ebook versions are available in Kindle and Kobo formats.