stephan huller

I remember reading in one of those old crazy books you find in Google Books that Chrestianoi and Chreistianoi inscriptions outnumber Christianoi inscriptions by some massive margin in the pre-Nicaean period. The book was published in 1901 or something so I was suspicious. I happened to be talking with David Trobisch over a year ago and I asked him what the ratio was today. He said he didn't know but that he 'assumed' that these figures were outdated. The question has always remained in the back of my head. I was going through this book by Tabernee on the Christian inscriptions in Phrygia. http://books.google.com/books?id=CNH...relios&f=false

There can be little doubt that there is something to the claim.

Toto

p. 187 has Cheistianoi (ei = epsilon iota)

also p. 174 - but it notes that the first epsilon was corrected from eta

What's that about?

Diogenes the Cynic

It means an eta (Η) was changed to an epsilon (E). Both of those letters transliterate to the letter E in English, but eta was long (as in "weed") while epsilon was short (as in "egg").

In this particular period, though, both of those sounds (and Greek vowels in general," began to lose those distinctions and everything started sound like iota (short i as in "pig").

Thus, the words "Christos" and "Chrestos" both sounded like "Christos" and somebody hearing the name would not necessarily know what vowel to use. It's similar to a shwa in English, (the generic "uh" sound that can mean anything)

So apparently some inscriber made a guess and wrote XPHSTOS ("Chrestos" with an eta) instead of XPISTOS ("Christos"). Somebody else then tried to correct that (still erroneously) to XPESTOS ("Chrestos" with an epsilon).

Toto

I know all about that - I don't think they sounded like a schwa, but eta did merge with iota, so the confusion of xrhstos with xristos is understandable. iota and epsilon I think were still distinct, as they are in modern Greek.

But this doesn't explain the 'ei' - whether the e is long or short. And this spelling seems to be quite deliberate.

I don't think there are any examples of chrestos with an epsilon. :huh:

Diogenes the Cynic

I didn't mean that it sounded like a shwa, but that it was analogous to it in that the short i became a sort of generic, catch all sound that absorbed other vowels.,
All Greek dipthongs are long regardless, so it doesn't really matter.
As I said (and as Abernee says), the attempted correction was erroneous in itself.

aa5874

What???? You are guessing. Please, anybody can guess their own history.

There is NO reasonable doubt the passage has been TAMPERED with and is therefore questionable.

Under ultraviolet light the "E" can be seen. The ORIGINAL word was CHRESTIANOS

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Histori...y_Christianity

stephan huller

It also seems to have been the norm in Iran (= krestyana) cf Life of Mar Aba I remember David here mentioning that there is no clear evidence that the Marcionites used the term Chrestos.

http://books.google.com/books?id=y7I...syriac&f=false

Duke Leto

I'll bite, given the preference Chrestian over Christian in inscriptions... What does this tell us about Christian origins besides the obvious hypothesis that they were just lousy spellers? And the possibility that Suetonius wasn't in reference to the Chrestus who had the Roman Jews so upset.

stephan huller

i dont know. many things. what does any one fact tell you about soneone or sonething? aristotle equated having a broad forehead with intelligence. nietzsche equated physical ugliness with having a bad soul. i am always suspicion of people with small skulls. but then again my skull is as big as a watermelon.

stephan huller

one thing it might show is that christians identified themselves as the nobility