is treated here, namely the figure of a ‘consecrated person’,* is, in itself, an old phenomenon in Israel. A ‘consecrated person’ = Hebrew nāzīr (with various nominal and verbal derivatives of the same root) = ‘Nazirite’ (the rendering that has become usual), was a person given to God. According to old Israelite tradition, there had been Nazirites in the early period, chosen and appointed as such by the God of Israel himself, remaining ‘consecrated’ for the whole of their life and regarded as a ‘gift’