Maklelan

Those exceptions only exist because of the massive gaps in your awareness of the texts, the archaeology, and the scholarship.

Nope. Jesus was unquestionably known as the Christ from the very beginning. I've shown that already. You've not responded.

The New Testament manuscript from the second to fourth centuries supports the primacy of Jesus Christ.

As I've already shown, that spelling is demonstrably secondary.

I make mistakes all the time, and I acknowledge them when they're pointed out to me. Your errors have been pointed out to you repeatedly and you refuse to acknowledge them.

mountainman

I disagree with your notion that the abbreviated (nomina sacra) form of Jesus and Christ are unambiguously transliteratable as the full and explicit form of Jesus and Christ. The original article cited rejects your assertion as follows:


Do you have a single text transliterated correctly with the key word Christ on it? I dont think there are any early exemplars of this.

stephan huller

Why do you keep citing that insipid History Hunters article? Maklelan has actual academic credentials. I don't even know this guy from Adam. I am not his friend. We don't bowl together. But I respect him as I respect anyone who should have better things to do and actually bothers to crawl into this sewer and actually engage some of the rats who live here.

Do you think you are Maklelan's equal on any subject related to the Jewish-Christian tradition? I don't know where you get your authority. You don't believe in God so you can't think that you received some divine epiphany about the truth so how is it that some new guy who actually took the time to formally study the material isn't supposed to be respect by at least some of the vermin here? Here are his academic credentials:

stephan huller

Here are all the references to Christianoi in Athenagoras in a Plea for the Christians - four of them. The first can be read to imply that 'Christian' was something which was applied to the members of the Jesus sect from outsiders:

And accordingly, with admiration of your mildness and gentleness, and your peaceful and benevolent disposition towards every man, individuals live in the possession of equal rights; and the cities, according to their rank, share in equal honour; and the whole empire, under your intelligent sway, enjoys profound peace. But for us who are called Christians (ἡμεῖς δὲ οἱ λεγόμενοι Χριστιανοί) you have not in like manner cared; but although we commit no wrong— nay, as will appear in the sequel of this discourse, are of all men most piously and righteously disposed towards the Deity and towards your government— you allow us to be harassed, plundered, and persecuted, the multitude making war upon us for our name alone. [1.1]

and again:

If, indeed, any one can convict us of a crime, be it small or great, we do not ask to be excused from punishment, but are prepared to undergo the sharpest and most merciless inflictions. But if the accusation relates merely to our name (δὲ μέχρις ὀνόματος ἡ κατηγορία)— and it is undeniable, that up to the present time the stories told about us rest on nothing better than the common undiscriminating popular talk, nor has any Christian been convicted of crime— it will devolve on you, illustrious and benevolent and most learned sovereigns, to remove by law this despiteful treatment, so that, as throughout the world both individuals and cities partake of your beneficence, we also may feel grateful to you, exulting that we are no longer the victims of false accusation.

and again:

What, therefore, is conceded as the common right of all, we claim for ourselves, that we shall not be hated and punished because we are called Christians (μὴ ὅτι Χριστιανοὶ λεγόμεθα μισεῖσθαι καὶ κολά ζεσθαι) - for what has the name to do with our being bad men - but be tried on any charges which may be brought against us, and either be released on our disproving them, or punished if convicted of crime— not for the name (for no Christian is a bad man unless he falsely profess our doctrines), but for the wrong which has been done.

Maklelan

I don't have an early one where it is spelled out, but as I've shown, the very text of the New Testament makes it absolutely clear that Jesus and Christ are original. The explanation for the naming of Jesus simply makes no sense at all if you insist the nomen sacrum there obscures any other name besides Jesus. The quotations of Old Testament verses that call a specific figure "anointed" simply make no sense if you insist the nomina sacra there obscure the word "Chrestos," especially where the next verses states that Jesus was that one anointed by God. It's simply nonsensical to insist that these nomina sacra originally obscured anything other than the names Jesus and Christ. It's even more nonsensical to posit that in those verses they mean Jesus and Christ, but everywhere else they mean Chrestos and whatever else you think Jesus was called. The only evidence that is available points unambiguously and unequivocally to the names Jesus and Christ and nothing else.

stephan huller

But the Marcionite gospel didn't read connect Jesus with Christos. None of the Marcionite scholars have ever figured out why Chrestos was preferred. They know Jesus was wholly divine for the Marcionites. My assumption has always been there is a pronounced Jewishness about the Marcionites (Aram “those of Mark”). I can't shake the idea that Chrestos has something to do with yashar and yashar with the (angelic) name Israel.

The ultimate question is Ephrem's report about the Syriac name Isu. Is this just a Syriac rendering of the Greek Iesous used perhaps by the Marcionites in Edessa or a wholly different root (like Clement and the other Fathers who think Jesus's name has root other than “to save”

Still playing superheroes

Maklelan

But it also suggested the God of the Old Testament was not the God of the New Testament. That's clearly quite a significant disconnect from the New Testament. Marcionite beliefs don't reflect earliest Christian ideologies. They derive from the synthesis of specific Christian ideals and gnostic cosmology.

The Redeemer God of Marcionite faith was a rejection of the Jewish Messiah, or Christ. The common name Chrestos was just a natural replacement, given they were taking over many texts where the name Christ appeared. The propensity of Romans to misunderstand the name Christian and the popularity of the wordplay among Christians made it all the more convenient.

The name Israel has direct reference to El, the deity of the Hebrew Bible. Marcionites rejected that deity.

I don't think there's much of a chance of determining what it meant with any degree of confidence.

By the way, you may be interested in this article, which talks about two early manuscripts of 1 Peter dating to the late third or early fourth century CE where the scribes have changed the original adjective χρηστος from 1 Peter 2:3 to χριστος, thus, instead of "taste and see that the Lord is good," they read, "that Christ is Lord." This shows that prior to Nicea we already have Christian scribes pushing back against the secondary use of χρηστος (and overcompensating here).

stephan huller

I think I am fully up to speed on (a) what the Patristic reports say about the sect and (b) what lazy scholarship has done with it. I have likened it to developing knowledge about the Jews exclusively from Hamas TV, Mein Kampf and the Protocols of Zion.

mountainman

The author of the History Hunters article also has actual academic credentials as well. See the about page.



It's a two way street.



In regard to any subject related to "Pagans, Jews and Christians" as defined by the book of the same name by Arnaldo Momigliano, I think I may be Maklelan's equal on the subject of the Pagans. But one thing I am absolutely sure about is the fact that we are all students, and in that sense we are all equal.


Nobody has ever bothered to ask me this, but I think the theology of Plotinus is cool.

mountainman

But from which century does the earliest physical manuscript that we have for the fragments of this supposed text from Athenagorus derive?