dog-on

Thanks.

So both the words Church and Christ are used with a certain artistic liscense and, in fact, Paul may just as easily mean something like assemblies of Judea in Yahweh, since it is clear that Yahweh is translated as Lord in the LXX and Paul sometimes uses Lord to refer to God and not specifically Jesus?

With me so far?

spin

I'd say that Paul is using the word εκκλησια just as he inherited it from the cultural tradition he lived in. In Chronicles it basically has a religious significance, eg 2 Chr 30:25, "the assembly, the priests and the Levites". (Paul also inherited χριστος with the proviso that he has a commitment to Jesus as χριστος.) Paul didn't mean "something like assemblies of Judea in Yahweh". He was giving the exact Greek for that notion.

When is the non-titular κυριος used outside the few times in 1 Cor to refer to Jesus?


spin

dog-on

Nowhere that I can recall.

I tried to make that point to Abe, but the post was split off. Usually it seems, when referring to Jesus, Paul either uses Christ or the Lord Jesus Christ.

Anyway, so it seems that I am still left with Tacitus and Josephus. Both of which have so much baggage associated with them, that I my actually be left with nothing at all, except perhaps, wishful thinking.

How do those NT scholars do it...

spin

Sorry, this has partially been a long brain fart. This is the text:

ταις εκκλησιαις της ιουδαιας εν χριστω

the assemblies of Judea in the messiah

To me the result is basically the same. Paul is using terms that he inherited, εκκλησια and χριστος.

The Syriac for new testament εκκλησια is עדת which is also the biblical Hebrew word for assembly, translated as εκκλησια in the LXX.


spin

dog-on

I realized this on the other thread. Is that last word not Christos?

spin

Yup, Greek word for messiah.

Ya know it's interesting how the christian church has insisted on using "Christ" rather than "messiah", not "Jesus messiah".


spin

arnoldo

Indeed, if the gospel/epistle writers would've mentioned actual physical churches, rather than assemblies of believers, it would've been quite an anachronistic error. Beginning from the time of Constantine onwards it is more plausible for pagan temples to have been "converted" for christian use.

dog-on

Is kristos soley the Greek translation of the Jewish word messiah, or did it have some other usage as well?

Johnny Skeptic

According to Rodney Stark it would. In "The Rise of Christianity," he shows that the first century Christian church was so small that there were only an estimated 7,530 Christians in the entire world. Stark includes discussions about a lack of evidence in archaeology and papyrology. Even 7,530 Christians in Palestine in the year 100 A.D. would not have been significant. Even James Holding says in his article "The Impossible Faith" that "[N.T.] Wright concludes:

'This subversive belief in Jesus' Lordship, over against that of Caesar, was held in the teeth of the fact that Caesar had demonstrated his superior power in the obvious way, by having Jesus crucified. But the truly extraordinary thing is that this belief was held by a tiny group who, for the first two or three generations at least, could hardly have mounted a riot in a village, let alone a revolution in an empire.'"

If that is true, so what?

It is interesting to note that if the Ten Plagues occured in Egypt, and if Jesus performed many miracles in Jerusalem, and throughout all Galilee, and throughout all Syria, those news stories would have been unique and unprecedented in all of human history, and the stories became the biggest news coverups in history since they are mostly mentioned only in the Bible. Only a God or a powerful alien could have pulled off the coverups, but why?

spin

Outside the limits of this Judeo-christian religious thought, it meant unguent or ointment, which doesn't seem relevant here.


spin