aa5874

I have already made reference to a source that clearly stated the Simon bar Cocheba was called the Messiah or Christ.

Now, again people who believe in Christ are called Christians.

People who are called Christians claim that Christ was promised by Jewish prophets like Isaiah and Daniel.

Jews believed that Christ was also prophesied by Daniel.

Why cannot a Jew be called a Christian?

Pliny and Tacitus did not separate Christians from Jews. Tacitus claimed Judaea was the origin of the superstiton. The Christian superstition originated in Judaea and spread to Rome.

And Pliny in his letter did claim that people involved in the Christian superstition were returning to the temples they had deserted, resuming religious rites that they had abandoned and were purchasing animals to be sacrificed.



You MUST first show that a Jew who believed in Christ cannot be called a Christian.

The existence of Jesus is irrelevant. In the NT, Jesus was presented as a Jew called Christ who had Jewish followers called Christians.

Jews were called Christians. Jews believed in Christ.

Tyro

I saw no source actually proving that Simon was called Christos. That his followers or himself may have regarded him to be the Messiah, does not prove that he was ever called Christos or that his followers of him were called Christiani. You cannot just claim this. The burden of proof is on you.

You have no evidence of this. Only the Christians as we know them, were actually called Christiani and claimed that their Christ were promised by the prophets.

I have never claimed a Jew cannot be called a Christian, just that the Jews were not called Christians just for being Jews. And as I have said, probability is not the same as possibility.

Yes. So what? That Christianity originated in Judaea perhaps proves that the founders of Christianity (perhaps people like Paul and Cephas) were Jews. That does not prove that Jews were ever called Christians just for being Jews.

No, I must not. The burden of proof is on you, because you are the one making a claim. You claim christiani was used referring to Jews. Of course Jews believing in Christ Jesus - like Paul - were called Christians, but that doesn't mean that any other sect were ever called that.

Some Jews believed in Christ Jesus. They were called Christiani. There is no evidence in support of followers of Theudas, Menahem, Judas the Gallilean, Simon Bar Kochba, or anyone else who claimed or was claimed to be a king or prophet, ever having been called christiani. Certainly, you have no evidence at ALL, and no probable deductions, in support of Jews being called also Chrestiani, which this thread is about. There is nothing Jewish about the Chrestiani inscriptions. Jews in general believed in a Messiah to come, not in a present or recent person being the Messiah. Therefore Jews did NOT believe in Christ and were thus NOT called Christiani. Just repeating the opposite does not make you right - ever.

aa5874

I will show you again ,as found in the NT (John) and Jewish scripture (Daniel 9.26), the word Messiah is interpreted as Christ.



John 1:41 - Joh 4:25 - It should be clear to you now that Jews believed in and expected a Messiah called Christ.

Simon bar Cocheba was a Jew, called the Messiah which is interpreted Christ.

This is basic deduction.

Any person regardless of ethnicity, race, nationality or color can be called a Christian, and that include any Jew, if they believe in Christ.

Jews believed and expected Christ before the story of Jesus. Jews were Christians before Jesus.

Non-Jews or Gentiles believe in the Christ predicted in Jewish scripture and were called Christians after Jesus Christ was fabricated out of the Hebrew Bible.

Jews believe in the Christ predicted in the same Jewish scriptures. Jews were called Christians before non-Jews or Gentiles.

Tyro

So you use undoubtely Christian sources to deduce that Jews believed in a Christ before Christ Jesus? Not very clever.

When was Simon Bar Kochba called the Messiah/Christos?

Yes, Jews can be called Christians, if they believe in a Christ. Ordinary Jews do not believe in a Christ, but only that a Christ will arrive one day.

They expected a Christ and believed that a Christ would come. You have not proven that the Jews believed in a certain Christ, which would make them "Christians" in some fashion. Thus, Jews can NOT be said to have been Christians before the belief in Christ Jesus emerged.

AFTER, yes, but not before. That is unproven.

You still have no evidence for this notion. Just repeating it does nothing for your case. You have no case. There is no proof of anyone being called Christiani before the Christians, in the days of Nero. Jews were called Jews, even though they expected a Messiah. Find ANY historian, ancient of present, who claims something else.

show_no_mercy

Bar Kochba got his name "son of the star" (bar kochba) because he was thought to have been the Messiah. I guess if there were any Greek speaking Jews who thought that Simon Bar Kochba was the "messiah" they would have called him the "christ". After the failure of the Bar Kochba revolt, his name was changed to "son of the lie" (Bar Kozeba).

aa seems to be making the argument that "messiah-ists" who were Greek speaking Jews would be called "christians". Though the term "Christian" doesn't seem to be in the historical record until the 2nd century.

Who knows though. Maybe Hellenized Jews who were messiah-ists would have called themselves "christians", since Daniel 9:26 LXX has the word χριστου - "christ". Not sure what Greek speaking Jews who were messiah-ists would have called themselves prior to the "Christian" era.

Tyro

Indeed, Jewish believers in a Messiah could have been called Christians, but aa claims Jews were called Christians even BEFORE the Christians, and that we have no reason to believe. We also have no reason to believe they were called Christians simply for being Jews believing there was a Messiah to come. And Suetonius, Tacitus and Pliny can of course NOT have been referring to followers of Simon by the name Christiani.

Still, this thread is about the inscriptions containing Chrestianus. Even if Jews believing in other Messiaic figures were called Christiani, that does not explain these inscriptions.

aa5874

Exactly. Jews can be called Christians once they believe in Christ regardless of the nature of their Christ, human, spiritual or phantom.

You are not making sense.

Jews will follow their Christ and believe his words are from the Jewish God, just like people follow or believe the words of the God/man Jesus.

Simon bar Cocheba regarded as the Messiah interpreted Christ must have been believed by many Jews and probably had the following of virtually all Jews. In order for the Jews to have defeated the Romans, even for a short time, they must have believed in and followed their Messiah interpreted as Christ.



You cannot prove that people who believed in Christ were only called christians after the stories about Jesus.

According to Tacitus Annals 15.44, people were called Christians during the time of Nero. Tacitus did not write anything about Jesus. There is no extant evidence that Jesus did exist before Nero.

There were christians before the Jesus stories. They were probably Jews or people who believed in Christ. According to Tacitus, the superstition of Christians is derived from a character called Christus or Christ, in Judaea, NOT Jesus.





[ See Tacitus Annals 15.44. The Christian superstition originated in Judaea.

By deduction, Jews were FIRST called christians.

mountainman

Also by deduction, at that precise moment when "Christians" first appeared, the Graeco-Romans (ie: the dominant bulk of the populace of the Hellenistic-Roman civilisation at the time) were FIRST called and addressed as gentiles and then, subsequently, at a later date, as pagans.

Tyro

Indeed. So which Jews believed in an actual Christ before the origination of the Jesus story?

Yes, but this is later (~135 CE), i.e. AFTER Tacitus, Suetonius and Pliny. The Christiani already existed, as a NEW superstition, originating in Judaea.

Why? And even if so, this would only show that some Jews believed in Simon as the Christ in the 130s, but the Christiani did already exist by then. The followers of Simon can NOT have been the first called christiani (and there is no evidence of them ever being called christiani at all).

You claim, dispite the fact that you have no inscriptions, historical records or anything else, that Jews, who didn't believe in Christ Jesus, were called Christiani. There is simply nothing to suggest this. I do not have to prove anything. Just look at the evidence: Suetonius mentions a NEW superstition, so why would Christiani have been an old Jewish term? It wasn't.

Even if so, why couldn't people have believed in such a figure? Most scholars "believe" in Paul and Peter, even if you do not. They predate Nero's reign.

So now they needn't even have been Jews anymore, but just people who believed in some Christ? There is ONE single sect later called Christiani. Justin Martyr and other Church fathers does not mention any conflict in using the name Christiani. The word is used in the Acts of the Apostles, and also in the second epistle of Peter. Apparently, Christians were called Christians. You have not proven or even made plausible that there were any other groups also called Christiani. This conflict would certainly have been documented somewhere. It is not. Only Christians were called Christians, until you prove otherwise.

Tacitus did not say the Chrestiani's founder were NOT Jesus, but that the originator of the name was Christus. "Jesus" would have been a bad choice of words, since Chrestiani does not derive from Jesus. There is nothing to suggest that Tacitus means some other unknown group called the Chrestians. And this predates Simon Bar Kochba.

Certainly, everyone in Judaea wasn't Jewish. And even if they were, this could only prove that the first believers in Christ Jesus were Jews, not that Jews were called Christiani because of some unsubstantiated belief amongst pagans, that the Jews were "anointed". Christians were called Christians, Jewish or not. Just because Tacitus does not say Jesus this doesn't mean that there was no Jesus story. Paul - which you do not believe in - has a Jesus story. Doesn't Ignatius? Clement? The epistle of Barnabas? Didache? 1 Timothy 6:13 mentions Pilate.

Would you say there was no Jesus story at all - not even the belief in a spiritual Jesus - but only belief in an unknown Christ figure, which started the Christiani sect before Nero? Why would there have been such a sect? What are the evidence? We know only about Christians, not of any unknown Christ believing Jewish sect, using the same name as the Christians then later did.

Roger Pearse

Let's keep deduction and data separate, please.

If there is a text or an inscription which mentions Bar Kochba and uses the Greek or Latin word "Christ", can someone produce it?

If none can be produced, then we need to stop talking about him using this word.

I have no idea whether there is such a text, since I have never paid attention to Bar Kochba, but the point at issue seems simple enough, and perhaps we could have some evidence on the subject?

There are lots of loose assertions around that he was referred to as "messiah". Can we see the raw data for this also, please?

There's no real point in arguing about this stuff until the facts are before us.

All the best,

Roger Pearse