stephan huller

Clement's use of words with the ιανοί suffix in the Stromata:

Clearly Clement originally knew Christians to be named Chrestoi. The remark at the end of the passage is likely secondary (a later addition).

Clement is clearly repeating a term for heretics that originated in Rome or among Roman Christians. Origen says that in all of his travels he never met a Carpocratian. There never was such a thing as a Carpocratian.

The citation here shows that the term Christian was at least as old as Basilides but more importantly it seems to be associated with what outsiders (= the Roman state?) called the sect rather than how the sect defined themselves.

It is only the most superficial reading of this material that could support the idea that Clement's original text read 'Christian' here. Clearly the idea that is woven into the argument throughout is that the Chrestoi (= χρηστοί) are so called because they are the good, true etc. The reference to 'those of Christ' does not fit the natural argument here. It would have been senseless to his audience.

This is another example of persecutions being connected with the name 'Christianoi.' Yet as we have already seen Clement knew the real name of his community to be χρηστοί undoubtedly named after the good god of the community (χρηστός).

The last reference especially demonstrates that Clement is identifying the Chrestos (χρηστοί) as 'the really good man' or the 'good' (not 'the follower of Christ') made after the image of his God who was χρηστός.

stephan huller

I suspect that you have two terms for the same tradition. In Rome there arose the term Χριστιανοί connected with the persecutions in the eyes of outsiders and likely connected with the various Jewish messianic movements (could Χριστιανοί have been used in conjunction with the followers of Bar Kochba? Probably). The Alexandrian Christians and Marcionites (assuming they were different) chose to identify themselves as χρηστοί - no Latinized Greek terminology.

The person correcting the Gospel of Mark used this Latinized Greek.

stephan huller

There are five references in the Stromata. The first we have already seen:

The second appears almost immediately thereafter once again linking the Chrestoi as the one receiving the image of the Good god:

This is a very important reference for it connects not only the chrestoi with those who receive the image of God (= Chrestos) and not only emphasizes the Christians as 'the good' but more importantly neatly divides into the tripartite formulation of Marcionites and other gnostics (and condemned repeatedly in the writings of Irenaeus).

spin

I went through the Latin -ian suffix with Ben C Smith several years ago when he was trying to defend it as becoming functional in Greek through Roman contact.

The only example of note is Herodian (and Christian, if it can be shown to be early). All the rest seem clearly to emanate from Rome, Valentinians, Carpocratians, with all the other sectarian stuff in the second century. Non-religious examples, gentilics, reflect development through Roman contact with previously unknown groups such as the ασπουργιανοι (Strabo--I'd have to find it again), then used in Greek. Such a process would be totally unexpected with "Herodian".

stephan huller

And as I have been telling people for centuries the Greek word χρηστοὶ is NOT the original term used by the Marcionites and Alexandrians. The reference at the end of the last passage is from Proverbs 2. In Hebrew the word which corresponds to χρηστοὶ in the LXX is יְשָׁרִ֥ים It means 'upright' but more specifically is the root behind the term Israel.

The term 'chrestoi' is superficial. The core idea here is that Jesus is the angel who gave the name Israel to the Israelites. We can now follow the chain of thought back in Clement's citations back through Proverbs 2:21. It is incredible how stupid scholars are. All these books and papers and they miss everything.

stephan huller

I wander through my research and always come back to the same discovery in many different ways. Now I have connected it to Clement. The bottom line for this discussion i that χρηστοὶ was original and Χριστιανοί derivative. The words would have sounded same save for the ιαν

stephan huller

The same Greek variant of Proverbs 2:21 occurs in 1 Clement chapter 14:

The χρηστοὶ shall be dwellers in the land, and the innocent shall be left on it but they that transgress shall be destroyed utterly from it.

stephan huller

But what is it? I think it is either the product of one anomalous early writer within the Church (Irenaeus or Justin etc) or perhaps the world's first (and lost) Imperial decree against Christian sectarians translated back into Greek.

stephan huller

Chaim Rabin in commenting on the reference to a Jewish sectarian group 'the upright' (as-sdlihuna) in Islamic literature notes that it "reminds one that the Hebrew equivalent, yesharim, appears practically as a name of the Qumran sect." I think the very term Christian is a second century Roman terminology. The original name of Christians was that of the yesharim or in Greek χρηστοὶ (which we have noted is the Greek translation for yesharim twice in the early literature). I think this is how Clement's community referred to itself. It is also the proper name of the religion of the so-called 'Marcionites' (itself a Greek 'adjustment' of the original Latin name for the group the Marcianoi).

Here's what Schiffman says about it:

I don't know if the Marcionites originated from a Qumran sect or what you. I only know that because the idea that the sectarian association identified themselves as the yesharim we should take seriously that 'Christianoi' is not the original name of the Jesus cultus but Chrestoi. Now the real brilliance is whether anyone can see how Jesus or Isu (the Marcionite name in Syriac) can somehow be connected with the Hebrew root yashar. That requires a flash of insight that I haven't received as of yet ...

stephan huller

The obvious suggestion is Yeshurun. Yesharim literally means "straight," and signifies "right" and "honest." Nachmanides asserts that yesharim is a counterpart of yeshurun in Deuteronomy 33:5, a metaphor describing the Israelites. If Chrestoi is the substitute for yesharim in Greek the Aramaic terminology of the Jewish Targumim is 'truthful' (from the root kushta) and in the Samaritan Targum it is 'praiseworthy.' Balaam's speech from Numbers 23:10

"Who is able to count the youth of the house of Jacob, of whom it is said, they will increase like the dust of the earth, or even one of the four camps of Israel? Let me die the death" of the truthful,(=MT Yesharim) and let my end be like theirs."

The MT "Who can count the dust of Jacob and the number of the fourth part of Israel Let me die __ the death of the yesharim and let my last end be like his"