Soul Invictus

I found this excerpt on a website. It was pointing out an inconsistency in the Gospel of Barnabas. It states:

According to "Barnabas", then, Jesus is called Christ, but he
is not called Messiah. Despite his obvious familiarity with
the Bible, "Barnabas" does not know that Messiah (Hebrew) and
Christ (Greek) are identical in meaning


Any comments?

Peter Kirby

I found a web site with the quote here:

http://answering-islam.org/Barnabas/contra.html

Everyone agrees that Jesus was called Christ. The author of Barnabas thinks that Jesus is not actually Messiah. That is, Jesus is called Christ but is not actually the Christ. That seems to be the meaning of the Gospel of Barnabas.

One Muslim interpreter thinks that Jesus is saying in chapter 42 that he is not "that Messiah" who is expected to be the final messenger of God, but I can find no such distinction in the text. Muslims generally consider Jesus to be the Messiah, though not in the same way exactly as Christians.

But, again, everyone agrees that Jesus was and is called Christ.

The Gospel of Barnabas in one English translation can be found online.

http://www.islam101.com/barnabas/chapter_index.htm

best,
Peter Kirby

Soul Invictus

Peter,

you are VERY good, because I got the excerpt from that exact URL. I thought a while back you (personally) had posted how you had to explain to your father that the messiah didn't necessarily equate to X term (which i thought was christ, however i can't remember)

was that you?

Soul Invictus

Also, I guess my intention was to discuss the intended definition of the terms. To the best of my knowledge the Greek Christos means simply anointed one. I was wondering if anyone could expound on Greek thought as to whom (mortal or immortal) is deemed anointed and what is the conceptual context of this term. same thing with the hebrew term "messiah"

Lastly, would the last sentence that the two terms are easily interchangeable a valid assertion?

Peter Kirby

Why callest thou me good? Only Google is good.

That was me. The term was God. My dad had thought that Jews believe that God was more than one person because they expected the Messiah.

best,
Peter Kirby

Peter Kirby

The Greek Christos and the Hebrew Messiah have the same etymological root: anointed one.

I did a search of Perseus for occurences of the Greek term outside the New Testament. Here they are.

Euripides, Hippolytus (ed. David Kovacs) line 516 (7.43)
Phaedra: This drug, is it an ointment [christon - the accusative case of christos] or a potion?

Aeschylus, Prometheus Bound (ed. Herbert Weir Smyth, Ph.D.) line 478 (1.57)
Hear the rest and you shall wonder the more at the arts and resources I devised. This first and foremost: if ever man fell ill, there was no defence--no healing food, no ointment [christon], nor any drink--but for lack of medicine they wasted away, until I showed them how to mix soothing remedies with which they now ward off all their disorders.

Those were the only two that I could find in Perseus. I might find more with a larger database such as the Thesaurus Lingua Graecae (which I don't have). Don't get the idea that christos and christon are different words with a similar root; they are the same word used with a different function in the sentence (accusative instead of nominative).

So the only evidence I have indicates that, in ancient Greek, Christ meant "ointment." Could the commonly given definition of "anointed one" -- instead of the ointment itself -- be a gloss on the actual meaning, based on Christian usage? That reminds me of a thread we had on the holy chrism in early Christianity a while back -- anointing was an important practice in the early church.

In today's English, the terms Christ and Messiah have different connotations. Christ is practically synonomous with Jesus, almost as a surname. Messiah, derived from Hebrew, is used to indicate the Jewish hope for an end-time liberator. You will find the Greek word translated as "Messiah" instead of "Christ" in the New Testament when it is referring to the office of the Messiah instead of just being another name for Jesus.

I am not aware of a single instance of an ancient non-Christian Jewish text written in Greek that uses the term "Christos," apart from the two Jesus passages in Josephus (perhaps the Septuagint? could someone check?). Is it possible that the people in the Jesus Movements were the first to use the term "Christos" to refer to a person with a special religious function, specifically their Jesus? That is how we find it in Latin literature; "Christus" is the founder of the Christians (Tacitus) and the god of the Christians (Pliny). Other than its literal meaning of ointment, that may have been the way that it was understood by ancient Gentiles, as it is understood today--Christ is a name for Jesus.

best,
Peter Kirby

MortalWombat

On an off-topic tangent, yes Google is good. And a little disconcerting at times. Try entering your 10 digit phone number in google's search engine (with or without spaces or hyphens or parentheses, it doesn't matter) if you want to see what I'm talking about.