tanya

Thanks, Huon, umm, my French Poetry book, by Pierre Seghers (or via: amazon.co.uk), lists his name as

Chrestien de Troyes

It would be fascinating to find a link to a French site displaying the oldest extant manuscript, bearing his name, to better understand this linguistic evolution from chrestien to christian.

One would have thought that the south of France, under control of the Romans, where Irenaeus is supposed to have lived, could have had a more accurate rendering of the word, than the north of France, under control of the Goths and other "barbarian" tribes.

Diogenes the Cynic

Tacitus names him Christus.

...Nero subdidit reos et quaesitissimis poenis adfecit, quos per flagitia invisos vulgus Chrestianos appellabat. auctor nominis eius Christus Tibero imperitante per procuratorem Pontium Pilatum supplicio adfectus erat...

He says the believers are commonly called Chrestiani, but that they are actually named after Christus. Tacitus was trying to correct a popular misconception.

Diogenes the Cynic

Christus is attested by Paul well before there is any attestation of Chrestos. Christos is also common in the LXX. I would argue that the Tacitus passage, in itself, shows that people were simply mishearing "Christos" as "Chrestos."

stephan huller

You really believe that the existing manuscripts are faithful here? Christus of the Chrestiani?

Huon

The linguistic evolution of the name started in the south-east of Gaul, Christian, and evolved to Chrestien in the north, and probably later.

Diogenes the Cynic

There are no manuscripts that say Chrestus, so what would be the basis for saying it isn't original? Paul was already saying it 60 years before Annals.

Duke Leto

You kind of need more data here, stephan. More than a memory of an old book saying Chrestianoi inscriptions outnumbered Christianoi inscriptions.

To put together a coherent theory you're going to need to find the published data on the actual inscriptions and their provenance. You'll need to get a rough idea on their dates. Then you can build an approximate chronology demonstrating whether Chrestianoi preceded Christianoi or vice versa and in what areas.

Squeezing secondary sources and rereading the Church Fathers won't help much compared to primary source data.

Posting paragraphs in unicode Greek on the assumption that everyone else can read and comment on it also probably won't get you much useful input.

Diogenes, I think he was thinking of Suetonius instead of Tacitus. At least originally.

stephan huller

So what if no manuscripts say Chrestus. Tacitus was an educated Latin speaker. There has to be some corruption in the manuscripts. He could not have thought that Christus was the head of the Chrestiani. It's like if you read some where in English that Marxist theology came from a Jew named Morx. You'd instantly know it was a typo. It goes either way. Either Tacitus meant Christus of the Christiani or Chrestus of the Chrestiani but there is an error here.

The evidence here cuts either way. It is not an argument for either side.

Diogenes the Cynic

Tactitus was correcting the "Chrestiani" misconception by explaining that it was actually from one called "Christus."

I think your attempts to claim that Christus was not technically a name presume way too much pedantic exactitude and knowledge on the part of the pagan rabble.

stephan huller

You should have been a theologian. How the fuck do we know that? Faith? The only scientific explanation is to say a corruption occurred. We don't know which way.