stephan huller

chrestos might = israel

outhouse

bored tonight


your just asking for it


a little Bolland for desert?

stephan huller

Hebrew Proverbs 2:21 כִּי-יְשָׁרִים יִשְׁכְּנוּ-אD6רֶץ; וּתְמִימִים, יִוָּתְרוּ בָהּ

LXX Proverbs 2:21 χρηστοὶ ἔσονται οἰκήτορες γῆς ἄκακοι δὲ ὑπολειφθήσονται ἐν αὐτῇ ὅτι εὐθεῖς κατασκηνώσουσι γῆν καὶ ὅσιοι ὑπολειφθήσονται ἐν αὐτῇ

In short Chrestos = yashar. As Kittel notes Chrestos "when used of people means 'worthy,' 'decent,' 'honest,' morally 'upright' or 'good." (p 1320)

Yashar is always taken by the ancients to be the root of Israel. The noble of Athens were called the chrestoi. This is equivalent of yashar in the Pentateuch.

Duke Leto

Interesting. I, Dunno.

I can hypothesize a case where people talking about Jesus, historical or mythic, was originally surnamed Christus, which if I recall is "anointed", but that since Christus is presumably an obscure word and Chrestus is more common (?) people started unconsciously misspeaking Chrestus for Christus and since Jesus the Noble/Good makes about as much sense as Jesus the Anointed, it ended up being an acceptable or even preferred variation until the later Church fathers corrected it. Kind of remotely like how almost no English speakers remember that Latin X is equal to Greek Chi and that Xmas is thus an ancient abbreviation, not a piece of censorship.

Alternately, if you are Mythicist, perhaps Chrestus was the preferred original and Christus evolved from it. One can even hypothesize that a historical Jesus movement either named him Chrestus, or as you suggest called themselves Chrestianoi and the name Chrestus and then Christus got stuck onto that Jesus.

It'd be helpful if the inscriptions/graffiti could be ordered chronologically. I know the inhabitants of the Roman Empire weren't big on repainting or wall washing, since I remember reading there were political slogans for Julius Caesar still on the walls of Pompeii in 79 CE, and I don't think any radiometric methods apply.

stephan huller

Of course the question is still - why is there the Latinized form even here? In other words, why chrestianoi rather than what you'd expect chrestoi? What's up with the original -ianus ending?

Duke Leto

Where are most of these inscriptions?

If you want to go with the orthodox story (haha) they could have been propagating outward from a Historical Peter in Rome. If you're a Doherty Mythicist the Christian/Chrestian movement could have originated with Hellenizing Jews in Italy that then moved East to colonize Cephas and James' outpost in Jerusalem, which then sent Paul as an Apostle to assert authority and bring some kind of doctrinal uniformity to the varying churches of the East.

Maybe they were Latinizing for the benefit of Pliny the Younger?

Perhaps the early Christians were Jews and their Greek/Latin was a kind of pidgin mockery of either tongue. Call this the Monty Python scenario:

Diogenes the Cynic

Because there was a need to indicate "belonging to" (the meaning of the Latin suffix "-ianus)." Chrestoi would would not indicate that they were followers of a Chrestus, but that they were just "Good" themselves.

Likewise, there could only be one "Christos," so they could not be "Christoi" themselves, but could only be Christianoi.

As to why they used the Latin suffix, it was a fairly common loan word in Greek, and there are several other examples of "ianus" being imported into Greek as "ianos." Augustiani, for instance. You can even find an example in Mark with Herodianoi in 3:6.

stephan huller

but chrestianoi is odd. it's like the word for "marxist" in modern hebrew. marcsisti. clearly borrowed. not the usual formation

stephan huller

two other odd things. chrestus or christos was not the NAME of someone. latin was only spoken by the upper classes. this must have been assigned by the government.

Duke Leto

Ah. I think we're getting into epileptic tree territory now. Like the Centurions in Black coming to cover up the Massacre of the Innocents in Bethlehem as the result of Swamp Gas. Even if the Imperial government was going to condescend to assign official names to every cult, why would the proto-Christians accept the name they were given.