[B-Greek] Full meaning of the Greek word "CHRISTOS"

Carl W. Conrad cwconrad at artsci.wustl.edu
Mon May 28 03:43:08 EDT 2007


On May 27, 2007, at 5:11 PM, Curtis Hinson wrote:

> The personal name ascribed to Jesus?  I hear the word used that way
> frequently in English -- no doubt we all have talked to people who  
> don't
> even know it's a title and not a surname like "Smith".  But at  
> least in
> NT usage, I very much doubt it's a personal name ascribed to Jesus
> anymore than we think that "King" was Henry VIII's first name.
>
> I'd say though that as NT tradition develops, the person of Jesus  
> is so
> tied up with the identity of the Messiah that the words are used
> together in that way without any article or elaboration, possibly as a
> kind of shorthand.

We might do that in a headline -- e.g., "Queen is in Buckingham  
Palace" or "Queen is in Scotland at this time of year" -- but that  
clearly is a title. I wonder, however, about the specific GNT  
instances of CRISTOS without the article but clearly referring to  
Jesus Christ: Mk 9:41, Rom 5:6, 5:8, 6:3, 6:8-9,  8:9-11 (3x) -- and  
there are the combinations of CRISTOS with KURIOS. At any rate, I  
think an examination of the texts cited by BDAG might be more to the  
point than theoretical arguments here about what we could expect NT  
authors to write.

>
> Of course it seems that non-Jews didn't relate to the word CHRISTOS,
> considering the letter from Pliny the Younger to Trajan about 112  
> AD and
> several similar blunders. But one could hardly expect that kind of
> ignorance from NT authors themselves.
>
> Bless the Name
> Curtis Hinson
> http://adfontes.ath.cx
> http://curtishinson.com
>
> Carl W. Conrad wrote the following on 5/26/2007 10:51 AM:
>> On May 26, 2007, at 9:30 AM, Carl Unger wrote:
>>
>>
>>> If anyone has time I would like to know a full meaning of the word
>>> CHRISTOS
>>> the word for Christ in the context of the epistles.
>>> I do know this isn't a hermeneutics mailing list but it's ok if
>>> it's related
>>>
>>
>> It's NOT OK to go into hermeneutics as such on a Greek word -- i.e.,
>> we're not going to talk about Christology when seeking to ascertain
>> the meaning of the Greek word CRISTOS (Χριστός) in any part of
>> the NT text corpus. That said,  I think it's safe to say (and this is
>> what you'll find constated in BDAG) that the word is used in two
>> ways: (1) as a title with the sense "fulfiller of Israelite
>> expectation of a deliverer, the Anointed One, the Messiah, the
>> Christ," and (2)  "the personal name ascribed to Jesus."
>>
>>
>> Carl W. Conrad
>> Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
>> 1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
>> cwconrad2 at mac.com
>> WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/
>>
>>
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Carl W. Conrad
Department of Classics, Washington University (Retired)
1989 Grindstaff Road/Burnsville, NC 28714/(828) 675-4243
cwconrad2 at mac.com
WWW: http://www.ioa.com/~cwconrad/





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