tanya

Thanks, very much, Maklelan for an excellent reply.

Sorry to write, that I remain completely unrepentant.

Let me try again, this time, rewriting the text, in a more familiar English fashion, at least that will clarify the issues involved.

I start with one verse before the three we had been discussing earlier:

Acts 4:24

οἱ δὲ ἀκούσαντες ὁμοθυμαδὸν ἦραν φωνὴν πρὸς τὸν θεὸν καὶ εἶπαν· δέσποτα, σὺ ὁ ποιήσας τὸν οὐρανὸν καὶ τὴν γῆν καὶ τὴν θάλασσαν καὶ πάντα τὰ ἐν αὐτοῖς,

Someone took pains, there, a couple thousand years ago, to write THEOS, not kyrios.
God, is what is under discussion here. Not some human lord or other....

Acts 4:25 and 26, in plain English, not word for word.

Which, moreover, having heard in unison, they cried out to God, beseeching him to remember the words of God's servant, their father, David, who had reiterated that the Gentiles and their leaders had sought in vain to destroy Israel, by attacking him, David, God's anointed.

Acts 4: 27: again, not word for word:

Similar enemies today, including Herod, Pontius Pilate, Gentiles, and the people of Israel currently living in Jerusalem, seek to attack another of God's holy servants, Jesus, who had been anointed by God himself (i.e. unlike David, who had been anointed by the people of Israel, not God.)

We agree that moshiah is an entirely different word from mashiakh. (Spin disputes this, point, however.) We disagree that the English word Messiah, derived from the Greek word messias, originates from moshiah, meaning "to save". You claim, in agreement with almost everyone else on planet earth, that messiah from messias, is derived instead from mashiakh, meaning "to anoint". I completely, wholeheartedly, earnestly dispute this notion.

I defy you to locate EVEN ONE LONELY Christian, who will confess to THINKING "anoint", upon hearing the English word "Messiah", rather than THINKING "saviour", upon hearing that word.

Were you to set up a laboratory, for example at the famous EEG lab at U.Washington School of Medicine in Seattle, you could demonstrate that the electrical signals recorded from the Frontal (motor) Cortex, upon hearing the word Messiah, would be located over the side contralateral to the hand which would push the button representing "saviour", not the side contralateral to the hand which pushes the button to express "anointed".

NO NATIVE SPEAKER of ENGLISH, having been exposed to Christianity from childhood, THINKS of Messiah as "someone who has had olive oil poured over him", but rather as someone who will save them, so that they could emigrate to Heaven, upon attaining death.

I have no clue.

How do you explain that Codex Sinaiticus uses abbreviations willy nilly (DAD, KY, XY, IX,) with none of them explained? What is the algorithm for employing these abbreviations? Why was the algorithm changed later, with publication in the fifth century and beyond, employing full names, rather than abbreviations? What were the rules regarding the macra, and where were they enumerated? Why are there macra over some abbreviations, but not others?

How do you explain that Kyrios crept into the language, inappropriately replacing theos?

I am unable to explain something as simple as derivation of "ain't", let alone adoption of spellings consistent with a Greek grammar, of which I am wholly ignorant.

1. Epirus is a province in northwestern Greece. It is divided into four prefectures: Arta, Ioannina, Preveza and Thesprotia. It has a population of about 350,000. The capital of Epirus and its largest city is Ioannina.

Alexander was born in 356 BC in Pella, the ancient capital of Macedonia. He was son of Philip II, King of Macedonia, and Olympias, the princess of neighboring Epirus.

2. Flavia Iulia Helena was probably born in the city of Drepanum in Bithynia. Bithynia is just across the sea from Greece, today, on the Turkish border, but had been, from the time of Alexander, several centuries earlier, regarded as Greek territory (Troy, Homer)

Constantine's father was from Moesia, a stone's throw north from Epirus.

J-D

You shouldn't try to have it both ways. If you're completely unrepentant then you're not sorry.

Maklelan

It's not really unusual for them to use the word "God," but Second Temple Jewish messianism was still primarily focused on God. The messiah was a divine agent who represented God in an age when he was being pushed further and further from humanity.

But that's not at all what the text says. You're adding a relative clause where it's really just quoted speech. It's not "David, who had reiterated that . . . ," it's "David, who said, 'Why . . ." You completely leave out the interrogative ινατι. This allows you to obscure the fact that David would have to be understood to be directly speaking in the third person about himself.

Here you introduce qualifications into the text that simply are not present. It doesn't say anything that suggests "another of God's holy servants," it uses a subordinate and conjunctive clause. V. 27 is an elaboration of v. 26, not a supplementation. The grammar quite clearly indicates that Jesus is to be identified with the "anointed" of the previous verse.

There's not a single shred of evidence anywhere in this universe that suggests Messiah originates from Moshia (there is no /h/ for ayin in any Hebrew transliteration style).

That rather subjective impression is derivative of our modern epithetic preferences. It has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with etymology. On the other hand, I can point to numerous indications that modern Christians do not think of Messiah as "savior" rather than "anointed." For instance, just Google "messiah and savior" with the quotation marks and you'll find over a million hits that use that exact phrase, which is certainly not suggestive of understanding the words as synonyms.

I've provided evidence to the contrary. Can you provide any evidence for your conclusion, or is it just an assumption you make?

Then your contention fails.

It had been an established convention for centuries by the time of Codex Sinaiticus. Do you need people to spell out what USA means in a text about our country?

What on earth do the nomina sacra have to do with algorithms?

You had a lot of fringe groups inserting different things into those abbreviations for their own purposes. Spelling out the names in full simply puts an end to the opportunity to do that.

They didn't have to be enumerated. The abbreviations were pretty clear.

I don't see any inappropriate replacements. Would you mind citing some?

Then why do you make such bold and absolutists pronouncements about what the Greek does and doesn't mean?

That doesn't make him Greek.

Again, this doesn't make him Greek.

In those cultures, it was the ethnicity of the father that was authoritative.

Toto

Careful. Denying that Alexander was Greek just might start another war in the Balkans.

stephan huller

I remember in Toronto my hometown there was a statue dedicated to 'Alexander the Greek' and the Macedonians objected. They wanted him to be recognized as 'Alexander of Macedon.' It was a big deal for a news cycle. Thousands of people marching in the streets on both sides making a lot of noise. But then the unruly mobs were ultimately subdued by a couple of Turkish tourists. as I remember ...

tanya

Had I been writing 2000 years ago, perhaps I would have been sufficiently clever to have distinguished a Macedonian Greek from an Athenian Greek.

Today, they are all just greeks.
They spoke Greek, which, by definition, means:

THEY THOUGHT in Greek, because Greek was their native language.

Thinking, that's the key to understanding culture, not the location of the father's homeland. As you, Maklelan, are very well read, may I suggest you read a bit about Twin studies, where the twins were separated at birth, and raised in different environments (one Jewish, one Catholic, for example).

No, you have not provided evidence (nor have I) of what people THINK upon hearing the word "Messiah".

I claim, WITHOUT evidence, that no native speaker of English, having been exposed to Christianity as a child, associates the English word Messiah, with the act of pouring olive oil on the top of someone's head--"anointment".

I also claim, WITHOUT evidence (other than having very cold fingers now, as I type, in January, and very hot fingers in July), that the earth is tilted 23.5 degrees on its axis. I defy you to provide evidence to the contrary of either of my two suppositions, thereby refuting either contention.

tanya

Not a shred?

no /h/ on Moshiah?

hmmm.

><

Maklelan

Nope, not a shred.

That's not a standard transliteration of ayin, but I can't stop people from using it.

Maklelan

That's a quite presentistic and subjective standard. If you like it that's your prerogative, but you certainly can't insist I espouse it, and that goes even more for Alexander the Great.

I'm aware of the associated phenomena, but monozygotic or dizygotic genetic relationship are quite distinct from similar "thinking."

I've provided evidence that the usage of messiah as apart of savior is quite standard. Usage is what determines how people think upon hearing the word, but if you insist on this level of specificity, since you made the unprovoked claim, the onus is on you to share evidence, and so far the only evidence you've shared is your own conviction. Please show me some evidence that people THINK "savior" when they hear the word "messiah."

Then your claim is meaningless.

I get the impression that you're just playing an elaborate joke. None of this makes any sense, but it sure sounds ridiculous.

mountainman

In the absence of any response from the author, your post # 17 relies on late 4th century evidence. It is not assinine to ask when the first written form of the name of Jesus and Christ appears in the non-encrypted full form in the historical record. We are lead to believe that this Jesus Christos was some sort of an important person in the pre-4th century antiquity, and that the "Christians" were known by name of "Christians". But is this necessarily the case? Your substantial "proof" provided is very late and obviously cannot have any bearing on the question being asked. In fact it is assinine to use late 4th century evidence to demonstrate claims in the pre-4th century epoch.


You (and others) may have faith in the CLAIM that the name of Jesus and Christ and the Christians are pre-4th century phenomena, but you do not appear to have any evidence to support the CLAIM. In fact the evidence available appears to weaken the claim, on the basis of the non-neglible evidence for the use and physical appearance of other terms such as "Jesus Chrestos" and "Chrestians".