Ben C Smith

I do not think we have to go from Christ to messiah; I think we have to go from messiah to Christ. It is easy to explain why the Hebrew term messiah would be translated as Christ, harder to explain why the term Christ would have arisen on its own, apart from the messiah or anointed one concept.

Ben.

ETA: After all, Paul tells us where to look for the first messiah concept in Galatians 1.22, and that is amongst the churches of Judea.

aa5874

Galations 1.22 does not really tell where to look for the first messiah.

The author of the epistle is just giving a so-called itinerary.

But what is most interesting with the so-called Paul is that he seems completely dis-interested in a physical Christ or Messiah.

The author of Galations claimed Jesus Christ called him by Grace, but instead of going to Jerusalem, as a new convert, to meet with those who supposedly lived with the physical Christ, saw him preaching, brought the sick and the dead to Christ, knew Mary, knew where the Christ was crucified, where he was buried and where he ascended to heaven, the author of Galations, the so-called Paul, went to Arabia and it took him more than three years before he went to Jeusalem.

The so-called Paul of Galations will rely on revelations form the supernatural Christ or Messiah who rose from the dead. It is evident that the author of Galations considers Jesus as the Christ because he ROSE from the dead, and the author does not even claim he visited Golgotha where Jesus was crucified or the tomb from where the Christ resurrected, an indication that he really has no interest in the physical Christ, the spiritual Christ would reveal the history of Jesus on earth.

Ben C Smith

I agree! Paul does not tell us where to look for the first messiah. He tells us, as I mentioned, where to look for the first messiah concept.

I agree! He is not very interested in a physical messiah.

I agree!

I agree!

I agree!

Except for a tiny bit of fluff, tactfully omitted with ellipses above, I agreed with your entire post.

What a dirty trick. I had pretty much given up on responding to you... and then you decided to agree with me almost across the board.

Ben.

Clivedurdle

Looking at John's conflation of Messiah and Christ with this, why exactly are we not looking at a process of historicising a myth?

Adding in expectations of annointingness and warlordiness to one's saviour figure look like predictable evolutionary moves!

We should be able to work out some clades!


The evolution of the species Jesus to Constantine, via Schweizer and onto Dali.

gurugeorge

All of which points to this Messiah not being a man followed by the people in Jerusalem (like any other penny-anty merely human Messiah claimant), but his being a variant concept of the Messiah believed in by the people in Jerusalem a concept which included his having been cruficied and resurrected in the past.

aa5874

But, there is neither the first messiah nor the concept of the first messiah in Galations 1.22.


By the way, whenever I see anything in your post that I disagree with or appears to be erroneous, I will certainly respond.

aa5874

The authors of the Epistles does not in any way reflect the attitude of the people of Jerusalem, towards the concept of a Messiah and the authors were primarily addressing or writing to pagan people with his gospel of the uncircumcision as revealed by the spiritual Christ.

In order to get an indication of the concept of the Messiah in the 1st century by the people in Jerusalem, one must refer to historians or writers like Josephus . In the works of Flavius Josephus Wars of the Jews 6.5.4, there is a concept of the Messiah, a physical Messiah. Even Tacitus and Suetonius mentioned that the Jews did have such a physical concept of Messiah.

gstafleu

Well, exactly. It is easy to see how to get from Messiah to Christ. But then this Christ gets preached to people, and we agree that they would not easily have made the connection Christ->Messiah. Nevertheless, that connection seems to somehow have been made. How did this "back translation" happen? That must have needed some LXX-like knowledge, mustn't it?

Gerard

Ben C Smith

By whom, for example?

Probably either knowledge of the LXX or some explanation from an apostle. But I thought we were discussing the origin of Jesus being hailed as either Christ or messiah.

Ben.

gstafleu

Don't we agree that, at least eventually, Jesus was seen in a Messiah-like role? If so, we know that the connection did (eventually) get made, even if we don't know exactly when and by whom.

Correct. But again, I thought (perhaps mistakenly?) that we agreed that Jesus was seen in a role like the Jewish Messiah. We also agree that just saying "Christ" to the audience would not establish that role. So, what then is the origin of the audience, at some point, starting to see Jesus in a Jewish-Messiah-like role? Am I right in saying that in the epistles we have, Paul is not exactly going out of his way to explain the Jewish-Messiah-like role? We may conclude that Paul thought of Jesus as in that role, but we don't know why his followers would do so.

So I think that we can easily explain how Jesus came to be hailed as Christ: the LXX established a mythological entity called "Christ," simply by translating "Messiah" thus. Even if later readers didn't get that connection, they would get they idea that their was something called a "Christ." What is currently nor clear is how the link from Christ back to Messiah was made, in other words: what is the origin of the idea that Jesus was something like the Jewish Messiah?

Gerard