NATHANAEL (“God has given”). — One of the first disciples of Jesus, to whom he was brought by Philip, N. was at first reluctant (but St. Augustine, PL 35, 1445 and 36, 788 ff., and St. Cyril of Alexandria interpret the phrase “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” as affirmative), and then went. Jesus praised his sincerity and revealed to him his secret thoughts “while he was under the fig tree,” whereupon N. proclaimed him the Messiah (“the Son of God, the King of Israel,” an insufficient profession of faith according to Chrysostom: PG 59, 127-29), and the Master promised him greater revelations (Io. 1:45-51). N. was from Cana (Io. 21:2; 2:1 Cana is mentioned immediately after N.’s call).
It is very probable, and is now admitted also by many Protestants (H. Ewald, H. A. W. Meyer, H. Keim, H. Alford, G. Milligan, F. Farrar, B. F. Westcott, H. J. Newman in the Sermons, II, etc.), that N. is identical with the apostle Bartholomew (v.), whose name may be regarded as a patronymic surname, and who in the Synoptics is always listed alongside Philip. However, the Epistola Apostolorum (ca. 170) and the Fathers hold that N. was a distinct disciple. St. Jerome: “Apostoli et N.” (PL 26, 502); St. Augustine says that he was not at the Supper (In Io. tr., 109, 2: PL 35, 1917; In Io. tr., 7, 15-22: PL 35, 1445-49; Enarr. in Ps., 65: PL 36, 788), and explains that N. was not chosen as an apostle because he was a learned knower of the prophecies (cf. Io. 1:45),
whereas Jesus wished to transform the world through ignorant men; similarly St. Gregory the Great (Moral., 33, 16: PL 76, 693). St. Ambrose (Expos. in Lucam. 8: PL 15, 1883) praises his virtue and places him in parallel with Zacchaeus. C. Baronius still rejected the identification as a “levis conjectura.” St. Epiphanius (Haer., 23: PG 41, 307) identified N. with the companion of Cleopas (Lc. 24:13-35); from the sixteenth century onward, isolated conjectures identified him with Matthew or Matthias (whose name = N.), John the Evangelist, Simon the Cananean (“of Cana”), and Stephen (Io. 1:51 = Act. 7:56).
The name occurs in the Old Testament (Hebrew Nēthān’ēl, Septuagint Nēthān’ēl), where it designates a leader of the tribe of Issachar at the time of the Exodus (Num. 1:8; 2:5; 7:18-23; 10:15), and ten other persons, who appear only once, in the books of the Paralipomeni, in Estd. 10:22; Neh. 12:21; Iud. 8:1 (Vulgate Nathanias). N. is a Semitic theophoric name that already occurs in the Akkadian texts of the Third Dynasty of Ur (ca. twenty-first century B.C.) in the forms I-din-AN, I-din-I-lu.