Now taught not in the vernacular but in Latin, by a deacon who covered the middle eastern languages, he moved on to the Gymnasium (secondary school) in Nuremberg.
In 1734 he produced a formal defence of work he had undertaken on the Panegyrici Latini of Pliny, and the next year he was awarded a Magister degree based on his inaugural disputation which dealt with the Roman calendar in the period after the consulate.
It was on the recommendation of Mascov that he published a descriptive work concerning Ptolemy's Geographical writing, which ended up in the Leipzig City Library.
Relative relaxation after his studying came from visits to the Collegium Musicum, then under the direction of Johann Sebastian Bach.
There is further information on six of their children as follows: Heinrich Döring describes Nagel as a modest and unassuming man, with a learning that was both deep and broad.
Some of his works with middle-eastern contents were still considered important in the nineteenth century even though by that time research in these areas had progressed enormously.
Nagel also contributed to Johann Friedrich Hirt [de]'s "Orientalische und exegetische Bibliothek" (1772–76) and to other academic journals.