mountainman

A question for the grike eleete ..

what is the difference between χρησιανόν and χρισιανόν
aside from the former being "the earlier version"?

How do the words arise in the greek?
What componentry have they?
What significance is there in the difference?

Does anyone out there know?
Best wishes,


Pete

Faid

Do you mean the greek word for Christian? In that case, I have to say I didn't know the word was ever used with an eta (χρη-).
The word Christ comes from the greek Χριστός (with an iota), which means "anointed". The word χρηστός has a different root, having to do with use or conduct: the word's meaning is something like ethical, or decent, when it refers to people.

What is the context of the word χρηστιανός in the text?

Lugubert

And moreover, Faid, wouldn't χρισιανόν be the way a modern Greek (without knowledge of the classical language) would pronounce χρησιανόν?

S.C.Carlson

What they have in common is that both words are misspelled (missing a tau).

Faid

Well, they would be pronounced in the same way, just spelled differently (assuming the word χρηστιανός exists). That is how it goes for Χριστός and χρηστός.

IIRC, in ancient greek, the vowel η indicated the sound in sea, while ι the sound in this. But all these differences in pronounciation are lost now.

Faid

VoxRat

Back in school many years ago when I took "ancient Greek" ("koine", I guess, more specifically) we were told to pronounce η like the vowel in the English "say".

[Edit:]
Check this out.

Lugubert

In Sweden, we tend to use what the link refers to as the "Historic Attic Pronunciation", and find the "Erasmian" pronunciation very Anglocentric.

I suppose, though, that the aspirates could be material for several (more) theses (as could the Bible Hebrew ones).

Chris Weimer

The -ιαν- ending comes from Latin, not Greek.

mountainman

Hi Faid,

Thanks for the outlines. There are a number of contexts.
The immediate one was POxy 3035

Does this relate somehow to the "chrestus" and "christus" thing?
In that (in the latin) the former was an expression for "the good"?

Best wishes,


Pete Brown