jakejonesiv

It is perfectly legetimate to speak of the Pauline texts without advocating the historicity of "St. Paul."

The "deep knowledge of Judaism" is in the catholic layer. ymmv.

It can easily been seen. The Marcionite version can be recreated with a fairly high degree of certainty from the writings of heresiologists.

Jake Jones IV

No Robots

jakejonesiv:

You do not help your credibility by using ellipses to conceal inconvenient portions of the texts that you cite. Here is the unexpurgated quotation from The International Standard Bible Encyclopedia, with the supressed text in bold:

It is all the more remarkable, therefore, that the original scribe of Codex Sinaiticus retains "Chrestian." On the whole it seems probable that this designation, though bestowed in error, was the original one.

jakejonesiv

The remark in the ellipse is speculation IMO.
How suppressed can it be when you figured it out? Did you uh, click on the link I provided? It seems that my text suppression skills are pretty near nil.

Now a question for you. Wouldn't the scribe of Sinaticus understand the import of the word "anointed"? He certainly used the word "Chrestians" instead of "Christians." To argue that Chrestians was original but was an error is no answer.

Jake

No Robots

Okay, okay. No offense intended. It's just that I wanted to see what you had to say about that portion. "Speculation", eh? Great. Thanks. I'll follow the thread and see if anybody has something to add. I really don't have enough knowledge to comment further, especially as regards the manuscripts.

jakejonesiv

Hi No Robots,

No problem. I just want to know which came first based on textual and/or archeological evidence:
Chrestos/Chrestians or Christos/Christian

So far, there doesn't seem to be any definitive proof one way or the other. But I really think someone on IIDB will nail this one, and I can then cross it off my list.

Jake

Amaleq13

He didn't. Paul believed Jesus to be a new kind of Messiah and believed he qualified for no other reason than because of his willingness to allow himself to be sacrificed. It is the sacrifice that provides salvation and providing salvation = Messiah as far as Paul is concerned.

ETA:
Doesn't your reference to Paul's belief in Jesus as a "messianic claimant" refer to the Incarnated form?

Ben C Smith

Well, I certainly agree with you there.

This just pushes the question back further: How did Paul come to think of his death as in some way sacrificial?

Ben.

Toto

I seem to recall some prior discussion of this in christianos or chrestianos in Tacitus?

and

Christian?

Chrestos and Christos would have been pronounced identically in Koine Greek after about the second century, and documents were often copied by one monk reading the script to another who wrote it down, so the two terms might have been confused. We have no early copies of any of Paul's letters.

Lógos Sokratikós

Sure, and so for Socrates and many others. It's pointless. Except if you want to deny everything in Christianity just to say "Lies, lies, lies, all lies! Paul, humbug!" Christ mythology at it's trashiest. If the sacred writings of that religion say "Left", the Christ mythologists say "It can be reasonably said that it actually never went left" (which in theory is possible... After all, anything is possible!) to give them a chance to say "Right!" just to contradict that religion point by point. That's doubtful historiographical methodology, a very far cry from the work of serious historians in other parts of the science. Sure the miracles are hard to swallow, but denying their accounts point by point is whimsical and (therefore) bordering the fraudulent. It smells like Erich von Dæniken: I don't believe the standard explanations, so I'll point to what I think are it's weaknesses and that will give me room to advance my own unsubstantated explanations.

There are no photos of Paul, There is no Iesus Nazarenus driver's license in exposition at the Church of the Nativity... so they didn't exist. Sure... there are no writings by the alleged Socrates, so let's say [fill in your favorite claim] was Plato's mentor. The hemlock thing is just Platonic propaganda at it's finest! Boo hoo they killed the philosopher -humbug!

No Robots

The early Church fathers wrote about the Chrestus/Christos confusion:

Justin Martyr (Apol., I, 4), Clement of Alexandria (Strom., II, iv, 18), Tertullian (Adv. Gentes, II), and Lactantius (Int. Div., IV, vii, 5), as well as St. Jerome (In Gal., V, 22), are acquainted with the pagan substitution of Chrestes for Christus.--Catholic Encyclopedia