rgprice wrote: ↑Thu Jun 13, 2019 4:54 am
Thanks for all of the replies.
So, when Paul for example writes 1 Cor 1: "Paul, called to be an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God" this can be translated as: "Paul, called to be an apostle of anointed Jesus by the will of God"?
It can, yes. But... we also take our cues from how Paul uses the term elsewhere. Some people think that Paul uses Christ as a name, but that cannot be quite right, since names usually come in a prescribed order (Julius Caesar, not Caesar Julius; Ben Smith, not Smith Ben). Rather, Paul uses Christ as an epithet, rather like Augustus (Augustus Caesar
or Caesar Augustus; Christ Jesus
or Jesus Christ). So in this verse I would
at least capitalize "anointed" (the Anointed Jesus) to show its use as an epithet.
In the NRSV in Matthew the term Christ is never used, but messiah is used 17 times. In Mark the term Christ is used 2 times, and messiah 6 times.
Are all of these just choices of translation, with the exact same Greek underlying these words? Is this just a matter of translation choice?
I believe so. They are all just translational choices for the underlying Greek Χριστός (with those two exceptions in John that I gave upthread).
So in Hebrew we have the word "messiah" which translates in English directly to "anointed" and translates in Greek to "christos". In English we now use three words: messiah a transliteration of the Hebrew, Christ a transliteration of the Greek, and anointed a translation of either "messiah" or "christos".
Correct.
So I'm trying to make sense of how Paul uses the word:
Gal 1:6 "I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting the one who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel— 7 not that there is another gospel, but there are some who are confusing you and want to pervert the gospel of Christ."
To take this as an example, how does this really read in the Greek?
Does it really say "grace of Christ", or does it say "grace of the Christ"?
Verses 6-7 have "grace of Christ" but "gospel of
the Christ." But definite articles in Greek can be funny; the do not always work like definite articles in English. Also, there are some textual variants in verse 6 around the name Christ. Some manuscripts, including (apparently) Ƿ
46, have "called you in grace," without "of Christ," whereas a few others have "of God." Also, some have "of Jesus Christ."
It seems that all uses of christos I can find outside of Christian writings use the term as an adjective, thus is is always the "the anointed of David" or "the anointed of the Lord" or "the anointed" or "who is anointed" or "Joshua the anointed". So it seems here that this should read "the grace of the anointed" and "pervert the gospel of the anointed".
Well, χριστός
is an adjective. It is not a noun. However, adjectives can be used substantively (both in Greek and in English), almost as if they
were nouns. That is the case with "the anointed." It is still an adjective, but it is functioning more like a noun in that instance.
There is really no difference between "the Christ of God" (τὸν χριστὸν τοῦ θεοῦ, "God's anointed") in Luke 9.20 and "the Christ of the Lord" (Χριστοῦ κυρίου, "the Lord's anointed") in Psalms of Solomon 18.7. Both are substantive uses of the adjective χριστός. The real difference, I think you will find, is in how Christians (as explained above) can use Christ an an epithet or an honorific for Jesus. I doubt one will see this elsewhere very often, which makes sense, since only Christians thought that their Messiah/Christ/Anointed had already come and had a name. No name = nothing to which to attach an epithet.