Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!christian From: hall@vice.ico.tek.com (Hal Lillywhite) Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Subject: Re: Jesus who? Message-ID: Date: 17 Sep 90 07:40:49 GMT Sender: hedrick@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: Tektronix, Inc., Beaverton, OR. Lines: 32 Approved: christian@aramis.rutgers.edu In article jag@cello.mc.duke.edu (John Graves) writes: >Question: If Christ is English translation for Greek word with > approximately same pronunciation which is the Greek > translation of the Hebrew word meaning messiah and > both of those words mean "anointed" or "the annointed > one" then should Jesus of Nazareth be called in his > titular form either Jesus the Christ as in Jesus the > Messiah or Jesus, Christ? Christ is not a surname > in my reading. I suspect it depends on how you interpret the Greek. If it means "annointed" (adjetive) then we should probably add "the." If it means "the annointed one" then the "the" is implicit in the term and adding it would be redundant. Any Greek scholars care to comment? In any case it appears to be a title more than a name (although I'm not sure people 2000 years ago distinguished between titles and names). (At least one author, James Talmadge an LDS apostle wrote a book called _Jesus the Christ_ BTW.) [Christos is used as a noun (actually a title), "annointed one" or "Messiah". As such it would typically be used with the article. Examples (cited from Gingrich's shorter lexicon) of this use are Mat 2:4, 16:16, Mark 8;29. However the modern tendency to use Christ and specifically Jesus Christ as a proper name is also present in the NT. Examples are Mark 1:1, Rom. 1:4,6,8. In that case the article is not used. All the examples Gingrich gives use the article when it's meant as a title and omit the article when it's used as a name, but I'm not sure that the article is an invariable sign of the usage. Thus I conclude that both "Jesus Christ" and "Jesus the Christ" have Biblical precedent. --clh]