thentian

Look, I am not about to conduct historical research! I am hardly qualified, so I am content to read other people's historical papers. However, I don't mind helping out a little by collecting facts from various sources so that they can be systematized into some kind of database that others can use in their research.

Don't critisize my way of doing historical research when I am not doing (nor intend to start doing) any historical research! (And I don't consider the collecting of minor facts from extant sources to be historical research.)

Don't accuse me of making unwarranted assumptions about claims when I am not making assumptions at all about any claims. I am not even thinking about any particular claim! How can I then assume anything about it?

Don't accuse me of trying to evaluate things without proper evidence when I am not evaluating anything at all!

-

You jumped to a lot conclusions when I gave an example of how I thought others might benefit from a collection of real people named Christ. Do you usually get so much out of so little? Or is it just your particular hobby-horse to point out that "context is everything" and you saw this as a good opportunity to dashingly attack some strawmen?

Clivedurdle

If context is important, why is it the context of Josephus is missing?

http://www.britanicca.com/EBchecked/...avius-Josephus

I would love to see a complete database of all christs and variants, including German jewellers and French chretiens, Father Goods, chi ros and Chronuses and Chanel!

thentian

Well, judging from the quick searches I made yesterday I think I can find quite a few real people from the first century and thereabouts with names such as Chrestos, Chrestus and Christos. If someone will head a project to set up a database or Wiki, I wont mind doing a bit of legwork.

Toto

A database with the all person with the name "Chrestos" or "Chrestus" would probably be too large to be of interest, but if you have any examples of someone referred to as "Christos" as if it were a name (not just as an annointed person who might have been referred to as chrismed), that would answer the OP directly.

Clivedurdle

Collecting stuff is probably a British thing, I see a Linnean type classification allowing clades to be defined.

I would not limit it to names, but all occurrences for example as titles etc, with notes of dates, context, issues.

It is sometimes worth doing it for its own sake to see what you get.

It would only be a first stage, there are probably several university careers in making sense of it!

But we actually have around the planet the computers to do a lot of it!

stonewall1012

If I recall the "mistaken claim" account was concerning the reference to James the Brother of Jesus called Christ and disproving the mistaken claim that it refered to the founder "mythological" or actual of the Christian faith.

My point was that you wanted to disprove a mistaken claim; by definition the claim cannot be mistaken unless it is disproven.

Secondly, and I don't know how else to say this ... CONTEXT is everything.

Trying to find all the times and places where anyone ever used the therm "Christ" to refer to anything is like trying to look up all the uses of "The President" in reference to anything. It is hardly helpful. As I said the term has a specific usage within a particular context.

But of course that's unimportant here isn't it. The idea is to prove the claim that Christ is mythological and that the term is some kind of foul up where someone said "Chrestus" and oops it got translated into Christos thus founding the christian religion.

Is there any rational person here who understands what I mean when I say the context of the useage must be taken into consideration? If there is please help communicate this idea.

thentian

Righto! This is from here:

http://www.pontos.dk/publications/pa...provincial.pdf


"A similar example is from Nicaea, where an earlier member of the Cassii family Gaius Cassius Christos behaved in a way, which related him closely to the Roman community in the province.

Apart from his tria nomia used in public inscriptions Christos was during the reign of Vespasian or Titus responsible for honouring the Roman governor M. Plancius Varus from Perge on behalf of Nicaea,46 and later also on own initiative.47 Christos identified himself as part of the Roman community showing his relation to the governor especially by honouring him on a private initiative. But his Roman identity was further indicated by his engagement in the imperial cult in the city, where he served as archpriest; a status recorded on his sarcophagus.48 To the population in Nicaea, Christos was presumably still seen as a man with a solid Greek background, but out of his name and public appearance it was also obvious that Christos did identify himself as Roman and part of the Roman community."

Cheers!

vid

Great find, thanks a lot.

However, I have a problem following references. It is something called "IK", but i can't figure what it is. Do you happen to know document's source (ideally primary source) for Gaius Cassius Christos? Google turn out nothing too.

thentian

I got stumped by that as well, so I think we have to ask those here who are used to dealing with such things. So here's our question, knowledgeable ones:

What does it mean when the reference goes: IK 9. 25-29

ETA: And as I have already revealed my embarassing lack of education, I'm guessing "Ibid" means something like International Book InDex, but how can I use that to get at what it is a reference to?

thentian

This is what I wrote:

I don't see how you could read into the above that I wanted to clear up something. I was merely giving an example of how I thought it might be of use to someone.