DramaQ

Let me start by saying I am brand new at this, but totally addicted to this website! I can’t get enough of these discussions. I only hope I selected the right forum for this.

And if this topic has been done, please forgive me. I’ve searched around for it, but it’s a tough one to pin down in a word search.

My question is this: Is “the Christ� the same thing as “the Messiah�?

It’s always GIVEN that way. I realize that they both mean “Anointed One� (more or less) in Greek and Hebrew respectively. I know that when “Christ� is given in the gospels a footnote tells me I can substitute “Messiah�.

But….

Beyond the fact that both can be literally translated to the same word, how do we really know they were intended to MEAN the same thing connotatively?

Let’s take a look at GMark: The author wrote in Greek, and showed on several occasions that he felt he needed to explain certain words and phrases his readers might not understand:

Mark 3:17 “Boanerges, which means Sons of Thunder�
Mark 5:41 "Talitha koum!" (which means, "Little girl, I say to you, get up!" )
Mark 7:34 "Ephphatha!" (which means, "Be opened!" ).
Mark 15:22 Golgotha (which means The Place of the Skull).
Mark 15:34 "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"–which means, "My God, my

God, why have you forsaken me?"

Were AMark’s readers familiar with the Jewish concept of “the Messiah�? Would they automatically know the Greek word “Christ� and associate it the Hebrew word “Messiah�?

More to the point, if AMark REALLY wanted to explain or demonstrate the fundamental points of his faith (and this included the Jewish Messiah), why didn’t he at least INCLUDE the word that already carried its years of connotation and THEN translate it for his readers?? In Mk 8:29, for instance, he could have written:

Peter answered, "You are the Messiah (which means Christ)�

Is it possible that we’ve always just ASSUMED that the words are synonymous? It seems to me that AMark is pretty sketchy about his knowledge of things Jewish. Could it be that he never INTENDED to connect the “Christ� of his faith with the “Messiah� of Jewish expectation? Could it be that such a connection only came later, after the montage of faiths began to coalesce into what came to be known as Christianity? Linked only be a common translation of the name?

That assumption would go way back. AMatt thought they were connected, and took pains to make the connection through scripture. Even to the point of creating a birth narrative to trace his lineage to David. Something which AMark has Jesus explicitly deny as being a requirement for a “Christ� in Mk 12:35. Perhaps AMark already had an inkling that people were confusing the two.

It just seems to make a lot more sense to me if the concept of the “Christ� started out with no (or almost no) connection to the Jewish Messiah. (Are there contemporary Jewish writings which have a “Christ expectation�?)

I would love to hear other thoughts on this.

Thanks.

Cubeless Academian

Mark doesn't do this, but John does.

So Christ and Messiah were seen as synonymous by the time GJohn was written. Also, the Septuagint (3rd century BCE) translates mashiach as khristos.

DramaQ

Cubeless Academian wrote:

Thank you. Funny, I had looked at the Synoptics for such references but failed to check John.

But I'm not sure it fully answers my question. It only tells me that by the time GJohn was written the connection had already been made. (Or more accurately, it tells me that AJOHN believed the words to be synonymous.)

I still don't think AMark saw them as synonymous. The fact that AMark specifically included text having Jesus deny the need for a Davidic Lineage as a qualification for "The Christ" makes me wonder if AMark wasn't already addressing what he felt was a mistaken connection. Otherwise, why didn't HE give both words?

Cubeless Academian

The connection was made much earlier. As I mentioned in my last post, when the Jewish scriptures were first translated into Greek in the 3rd century, the word Messiah was consistently translated as Christ. The words were considered synonymous both before and after GMark was written, so it's natural to assume that they are synonymous in GMark as well.

I don't know. But note that GMark does refer to Jesus as the son of David (Mark 10:47-48).

DramaQ

So you did. Sorry about that. I SAW the "3rd" century but somehow saw that as CE even though I (now) see you wrote BCE.


So noted.

So on the one hand GMark wants to tell us that Jesus is the "son of David" and on the other hand to scold anyone for thinking this is a requirement for the Messiah/Christ. No wonder people have such a hard time trying to figure out what it's trying to tell us. lol... I think I'll go back to leaving this to the experts and keep reading.

Thanks for you input Cubeless Academian.

Mathetes

Not sure if I understand the point here, but I am also puzzled by the "Messiah" title given to Jesus, when his career was so different than anything that the Jews expected his Messiah to be. They expected the restoration of the monarchy, period.

However, the most puzzling thing is that the title was given from the very beginning. Mark is not the first to call Jesus Messiah. All the letters of Paul, far earlier than Mark, always refer to Jesus as "Jesus Christ", invariably. This, in spite that the Jesus from Paul, the crucified and risen Lord, is so far from the Jewish Messiah. Whatever the title means, it was given to Jesus from the very beginning, probably before many of the details of his human life had been, well, invented.

I don't think you are wrong, though. This contradiction is only a problem if you assume, without evidence, that GMark was written by one hand. Most likely it was an accumulation of redactions, and many of them advanced different and contradictory positions.

If I remember correctly, in the Shrinking Son of Man, Price defends that the first episode ("how can the Messiah be the son of David?") was written when everyone knew that Jesus was not a descendant of David, to explain why it didn't matter. Afterwards, when the propaganda machine was in full production, they gave up and started advocated that yes, he indeed was a son of David.

A similar thing happened to the Elijah argument. Elijah had to come before the Messiah. At some point Jesus explains that Elijah has come and he is John the Baptist. But then, the next layer of redactors didn't like this lame excuse and made Elijah come full featured in the Transfiguration. If that had indeed happened, why the hell would have Jesus said that Elijah was John the Baptist?

These explanations make a lot more sense to me than anything I have read from apologists trying to harmonize these contradictions.

Coming back to the subject, you may be interested in reading the "The Anointed One" chapter of the Price book.

Amaleq13

To make it even more puzzling, the author of Mark seems to treat the name "Jesus" as a title as well since "the" comes before it in the original Greek. At least that is what the folks around here who read Greek say.

Christ = Anointed = Messiah

Jesus = God's Salvation

That suggests to me that every reference in Mark to "the Jesus Christ" should be read "The Anointed Savior from God".

Mathetes

Oops... I must have missed that conversation, but if you refer to the fact that Mark uses article + proper noun... well, that is normal grammar in Greek. I am currently reading Republic, and it happens all the time.

I feel a bit guilty if I just spoiled a nice theory... :huh: (on the other hand, these new smileys are cool... :thumbs: )

DramaQ

Originally I was speculating that the “Christ� in GMark was a fundamentally different “being� than the Jewish “Messiah�. That the two words for “anointed� are literally the same but connotatively very different.

I even went so far as to suggest that AMark threw in a line for Jesus to make it clear that he didn’t want the two to be confused.

Even if both concepts originated historically from the same place, by the time we get to Paul, Mark et al I wonder if the authors themselves came to see them as different. After all, plenty of Xtians today profess a faith in a “Christ� who’s histories and origins they don’t understand and know little about. They only know and care about “THEIR� Christ, not to be confused with other religions version of him.

Of course, that depend somewhat on which set of Jews you’re talking about, right? Seems to me there was a large variety of expectations for the Messiah among different sects by the 30s CE.

Initially. But if people wait long enough for a “rescuer�, the feats and accomplishments they expect from that person is bound to grow over time. In this case, from a great warrior king to a savior of souls and an eternal Kingdom of God.

Exactly. And Paul's (and Mark's) strictly Greek evocation of the word with no reference back to the Hebrew says (to me) that he IS far removed from the original Jewish concept, and embroiled so completely in a Hellenized form of it that one could almost call them “different beings�. Perhaps AMark’s version of this being fell somewhere between the two.

I agree. Although I wouldn’t say that I was assuming GMark was written by one hand. I thought using “AMark� was shorthand for “The author(s) of GMark�. I WAS assuming that its more-or-less final form came out of a community with a fairly consistent belief system, and that that community had reconciled the book to their purposes.


Is that how you see it? It almost looks more to me like AMatt (as an example) simply took a story having what he thought was a “fair fit� of HIS version of the Messiah/Christ and “tweaked� it to suit his roots better. Adding a Davidic lineage. Moving it closer to the original Hebrew Messiah (but still not close enough to use the Hebrew word.)

My whole reason for thinking all this in the first place was because I was noticing some scholars trying so hard to make GMark’s Jesus fit into a Messianic form. Which, as you pointed out Mathetes, is almost absurd given that he’s really nothing like a Jewish Messiah.

I don’t think AMark was writing about “The Messiah�. He was writing about “The Christ�.

PS

Thank you. I will check that out!

Casper

I think it has much to do with AMark's "purpose".

His gospel seems to me designed to associate a new type of spirituality with an ancient and accepted one, probably to avoid persecution, but also to give his doctrine a "pedigree", so to speak.

And if you don't necessarily accept Markan priority, it makes even more sense. By priority, I am not necessarily referring to the physical writings, but the evolution of the story.