A nazir is one who has taken the vow of separation laid out in Numbers 6. The root is nazar, to consecrate or set apart. For the term of the vow the nazir touches no wine or grape, lets no razor touch the hair, and stays clear of any contact with the dead. It is consecration made visible on the body, a season in which an ordinary Israelite lives at the intensity usually reserved for the priesthood. Samson and Samuel are the famous lifelong cases; most nazir vows were voluntary and for a set time, completed with offerings at the Temple and the cutting of the hair.

The reason this word matters far beyond its size is a single man. The conversion story of Paul, the one where the Pharisee becomes a Christian and leaves the law behind, has to walk past the book of Acts with its eyes closed, because Acts shows Paul under nazir vows years after the Damascus road. He takes one of his own at Cenchreae and cuts his hair when it is finished (Acts 18:18). Later, to disprove the rumor that he taught Jews to forsake Moses, he pays the Temple expenses for four men completing their vows and purifies himself alongside them (Acts 21:23-26).

A man who had walked away from Torah does not underwrite a nazir vow out of Numbers 6 and stand in the Temple court to fulfill it. The Nazirite vow is one of the cleanest proofs in the record that Paul remained a Torah-observant Jew to the end, which is precisely why the popular telling steps over it so quietly. It is too inconvenient for the story we preferred to tell.