Diogenes the Cynic

Chrestos was a common name for slaves (in a condescending way, similar to 'Fido" for dogs).

Christos was clearly understood as a title (though Greek did not really have a titular analogue for Moshiach/Messiah and had to settle for "the Oily One)." It is the word routinely used for Moshiach in the LXX.

stephan huller

But the leader of the Christians was not named 'Chrestos.' That's a problem if Chrestianoi was more original than Christianoi.

stephan huller

How else do you explain the consistent Latinized Greek in early sources? Celsus makes reference to the Christianoi (it might have read Chrestianoi theoretically). Acts too. In Mark we have the Herodianoi too. It can't be one lone wolf guy misrepresenting proper Greek. The source in all cases must have been Latin or someone used to speaking Latin. How does this fit the profile of an early follower of Jesus in any way?

Duke Leto

I posited several explanations.

stephan huller

I didn't consider these as likely as the Imperial government finally officially naming a religion that had been around for over a century. Why is it controversial or more unlikely that Chrestianus or Christianus was the official designation for the religion in 160 CE? Surely someone official came across the Palestinian cultus before Celsus. It would be interesting to see similar Roman naming conventions with respect to foreign cults that developed after Julius Caesar. Mithras immediately comes to mind. There is no Iranian god named Mithras. Roman naming convention again?

stephan huller

Here is what the Wikipedia article on Mithras says:

The name Mithras (Latin, equivalent to Greek "Μίθρας",[12]) is a form of Mithra, the name of an Old Persian god.[13][14] (This point has been understood by Mithras scholars since the days of Franz Cumont.[15]) An early example of the Greek form of the name is in a 4th century BC work by Xenophon, the Cyropaedia, which is a biography of the Persian king Cyrus the Great.[16]
The exact form of a Latin or classical Greek word varies due to the grammatical process of declension. There is archeological evidence that in Latin worshippers wrote the nominative form of the god's name as "Mithras". However, in Porphyry's Greek text De Abstinentia («Περὶ ἀποχῆς ἐμψύχων»), there is a reference to the now-lost histories of the Mithraic mysteries by Euboulus and Pallas, the wording of which suggests that these authors treated the name "Mithra" as an indeclinable foreign word

stephan huller

Among the Cicilian pirates taken as captives to Rome by Pompey in 67 BCE, there were devotees of Mithra. And P. Papinius Statius, who long resided at Rome and died about 96 CE, speaks of “Mithras, that beneath the rocky Persean cave strains at the reluctant-following horns.” This is a poetical reference to the Persian Sun worship of Mithraism, in which the bull is represented as being dragged to the place of sacrifice.

DCHindley

"Yankees," a term used during the US Civil War to denote those who supported the Union, was originally a taunt directed towards the original Dutch settlers in New York City after the British took over. "John Cheese" they called them on account of their preferred food - cheese.

I suppose that the Southerners who called the Northeners "Yanks" were also using it in this perjoritive sense: "you bunch of ignorant immigrants!"

DCH

stephan huller

Here's what Roger Pearse has figured out:

The name of the god was certainly given as Mithras (with an 's') in Latin monuments, although Mithra may have been used in Greek.[1]

[1] Cite journal. p. 160: "The usual western nominative form of Mithras' name in the mysteries ended in -s, as we can see from the one authentic dedication in the nominative, recut over a dedication to Sarapis (463, Terme de Caracalla), and from occasional grammatical errors such as deo inviato Metras (1443). But it is probable that Euboulus and Pallas at least used the name Mithra as an indeclinable (ap. Porphyry, De abstinentia II.56 and IV.16)."

stephan huller

I was wondering what the religion of Mithras was called. Apparently in Latin it was the Mysteria Mithrae. Apparently all the devotees of the cult were male.