[B-Greek] QEOS as a proper name XRISTOS as a name
CWestf5155 at aol.com
CWestf5155 at aol.com
Tue Jul 27 12:46:20 EDT 2004
In a message dated 7/27/2004 5:53:37 AM Mountain Standard Time,
jdemail at charter.net writes:
Living as we do in a culture where names mean nothing (i.e., Mr. Smith has
never worked at an anvil, and John Anderson's dad was named Fred, not
Anders) we may be predisposed to insist that an ancient nomen (noun or name)
be emptied of significance (i.e., that it become a mere pointer to an
individual entity that in no way describes that individual) before we move
it from our "noun" category to our "name" category.
Of course QEOS, KYRIOS, XRISTOS are all common nouns in ancient Greek. And
yet for those who could say "ALL hHMIN hEIS QEOS hO PATHR ... KAI hEIS
KYRIOS IHSOUS XRISTOS," QEOS, KYRIOS, and XRISTOS become nomina propria, do
they not? Seems to me this would especially be the case with QEOS, since no
other name is used.
Maybe our contemporary linguists work with definitions that make "name" and
"title" distinct categories and mean that QEOS will still be a common noun
or a title and never a "name." Is anything more than current linguistic
nomenclature at stake here? Do ancient grammarians offer anything on this
question?
James Ernest
<<Cindy>>
In the current discussion among scholars, the majority are currently leaning
towards regarding XRISTOS in the New Testament as a name without semantic
content. At some point "Christ" was incorporated into the name of Jesus of
Nazareth so that his default name became "Jesus Christ".
The belief that XRISTOS became a primarily a name in place of a title is
based in large part on the 2nd century use of the title “Christ” by the pagans
Tacitus and Suetonius, which was clearly designation that lacked messianic
semantic content (Suetonius, Divus Claudius 25.11; Tacitus, Annales 15:44).
J. P. Meier says, “So current was the name Jesus that some descriptive phrase
like “of Nazareth” or “the Christ (Messiah)” had to be added to distinguish
him from the many other bearers of that name [Jesus].” He adds, “So
important was it to use ‘Christ’ as a distinguishing name for Jesus that, by the time
of Paul in the mid-fifties of the 1st century A.D., ‘Christ” was well on its
way to becoming Jesus’ second name”, Rethinking the Historical Jesus, p.
206.
So, if XRISTOS was well on the way to becoming a name in the mid-fifties, it
follows that the Gospels, most or all of which were written later, are using
XRISTOS as a name.
IMO, the fallacy in this position is the failure to recognize the extent of
the Jewish context (including messianic apocalyptic literature) and authors
(and even Luke's faith developed in a Jewish context). XRISTOS may have become a
name among pagans or non-Jews quickly, but that is a non-sequitor for the
initial spread of the gospel. References to the Christ in a Jewish context would
have activated some form of messianic "information", even if individual
hearer didn't personal have messianic expectations.
Cindy Westfall
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