CRISTIANOS, CRISTIANOU

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Thu Oct 24 16:02:25 EDT 2002


At 1:37 PM -0400 10/24/02, Jim West wrote:
>At 07:44 AM 10/24/02 -0700, you wrote:
>>Hi.
>>
>>Is this word CRISTIANOS, CRISTIANOU meant to be a mean
>>word? Did others call christians this word because
>>they did not care for them? I see this word in Acts 11
>>and 1 Peter 4 but each time I see it I don't see why
>>people say it was a word that others used about
>>christians in a bad way.
>
>it is an insult because it is a diminutive form of christos = *little
>christ*.  that may seem complimentary to the followers of jesus but to those
>outside it would have smacked of derisive humor.  *look, there goes another
>one of those vapid little christs off to devour another hunk of flesh at
>their vile "love feasts"* one can easily imagine an inhabitant of corith to
>say.

Jim, can you adduce some support for this? While it may have been used in a
pejorative sense, I really don't think that -IAN/OS is diminutive at all; I
think it's basically a Latin suffix -IAN/ and that it simply means
"belonging to ..."
-- 

Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Emeritus)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu OR cwconrad at ioa.com
WWW: http://www.artsci.wustl.edu/~cwconrad/



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