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Jesus: Christos, Chrestos or
Messiah What’s In A Name?
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Introduction Christology is the study of the nature of Jesus
Christ, specifically the relationship between his human and divine natures.
Most Christian Churches these days hold to the definition that was set out in
the First Council of Nicaea in 325, from which we get the Nicene Creed. This
established the doctrine of the Trinity as the basis of Orthodox Christology
and Jesus was declared both fully God and fully human. As the second person
of the Trinity, Jesus is considered to be the Logos
or Word of God, the Son of God – begotten not created. He is known as the Christ,
which is a Greek translation of Messiah from the Hebrew Moshiach),
and literally means the ‘anointed one’. Christ is
not his surname, but a title that proclaims he is the long awaited Messiah of
the Old Testament. This article is not concerned with the doctrine
of the Trinity as such. Neither is it concerned with Jesus’ human ancestry.
Instead, it considers the meaning of Jesus’ name and some of the titles that
have been given to him. Most people are not aware that these do have quite
specific meanings that go to the heart of just who the Church proclaims Jesus
to be, but which also open the door to alternative explanations. |
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Jesus – the name Only two of the four canonical Gospels
have a nativity story; Mathew and Luke. In Mathew, God tells Joseph (Mary’s
betrothed) that she has become pregnant by the Holy Spirit and the child must
be called Jesus. This is because ‘he is the one to save his people from their
sins’. Luke’s nativity story tells us that the Angel Gabriel announces to
Mary that she is to bear a son by the Holy Spirit and that she must name him
Jesus. She is also told that he will be great and will be called the ‘Son of
the Most High’. So
in both of these Gospels, God clearly instructs that the child conceived
through the Holy Spirit should be called Jesus. Whilst a common name amongst
the people of Judea of this era, the fact that these two Gospels tell us that
God commanded him to be named Jesus must be significant. Jesus is an Anglicisation of the
Latin Iesus, which comes from the Greek Iesous (Iesous). This Greek word can
refer to two similar but separate Hebrew names; Yehoshua or Yeshua. Yehoshua
is the oldest of these and appears to have been shortened to Yeshua (or
sometimes to Yesu), during the second temple period (538 BC to 70 AD). Most
references in the Old Testament are to Yeshua, although Yehoshua continued to
be used as well. Thus the name ‘Jesus’ could stem from either Yehoshua or its
shortened form Yeshua, . The name Yehoshua has two
possible meanings. The first is derived from the Hebrew personal name for
their god, Yahweh (Jehovah), and the Hebrew word ‘shua’
which means a cry for help. Yehoshua would thus mean ‘a cry to God for help’. Another explanation is derived from Yahweh and the
letters Yod, Shin and Ayin and which means to rescue or to deliver. In this
case, the name Yehoshua would mean to be rescued or delivered by God or, put
simply, Yahweh rescues or delivers. Furthermore, it is likely that the name
Yehoshua was originally Hoshea, which means ‘he rescued’. At some point, it
changed from Hoshea (he rescued) to Yehoshua (Yahweh rescues). This is
evidenced by Yehoshua the son of Nun of the Old Testament, better known by
the anglicised name of Joshua, who was originally known as Hoshea. So we have here two possible
meanings of the name ‘Jesus’; one implying a sense of someone who cries out
to God for help or through whom we can cry out to God. Or, it could imply
someone through whom we can be rescued or delivered by God. The former implies
a sense of a conduit through whom we can reach out to God. The latter a sense
of someone through whom God acts to rescue or deliver us. Jesus as Messiah Christianity proclaims Jesus to
be the long awaited Messiah of the Old Testament. It is often said that the
times of Jesus were times of Messianic fervour when the Judeans of the day
expected the Messiah at any time. But what was it that they were actually
anticipating? What, or who, was the Messiah meant to be and how does this fit
into orthodox Christian theology of Christ being God in human form? To answer
this question, we need to delve a little bit into the history of ancient
Israel and see how the concept of Messiah developed over time and what it
meant just before and during the life of Jesus. The golden days of ancient
Israel were a very long time ago. King David ruled a united Israel
approximately 3000 years ago in 1000 BC and his son Solomon began his rule in
about 965 BC. After Solomon’s death, the Kingdom was ruled by his descendants
until about 920 BC when it split into two kingdoms; Israel in the north and
Judah in the south. In 722 BC, King Sargon of Assyria (roughly modern Iraq)
completed a process of conquering the northern kingdom of Israel and the Old
Testament records its people being taken into captivity. These Israelites
were never heard of again, sparking off a myriad of theories about the ‘lost
Tribes of Israel’ – which includes the ‘British Israel’ theory that they
escaped into North Western Europe and became the ancestors of the Anglo Saxon
and British peoples! Another important point is that the Assyrians settled
non Israelitish peoples into the territory of the northern kingdom of Israel. Some 150 years later, in 586 BC,
the southern kingdom of Judah was conquered by the Babylonians (also broadly
modern day Iraq). The Temple was destroyed and many of their people were
carried out into exile in Babylon. It was in, and immediately after, this
Babylonian captivity that the ancient Israelitish religion gave way to, or
was refined into, what we could call proto-Judaism. This is the period that
much of the Old Testament as we have it today was written down. It is also
the point at which we could say that a biblical proto-Judaism emerged,
strongly influenced by the prevalent Zoroastrian religion of the Babylonians.
As with Israel, many people from elsewhere in the Babylonian empire were
settled in the lands of Judah. In 539 BC, Judahites (the
Israelitish people of Judah) were allowed to return to Judah from Babylon by
the Persian King Cyrus who had conquered the Babylonians. They immediately
begin work in rebuilding the Temple which was completed by about 516 BC, and
which became known as the second Temple. The 5th Century BC, in which the
whole area came under Persian rule, saw a period of reformation and
scholarship, including the institution of Synagogue prayer services and
public reading of the Torah (first 5 books of the Old Testament or
Pentateuch). Then in 331 BC, the Persian Empire was defeated by Alexander the
Great and the land of Israel came under Greek rule. Following Alexander’s
death in 323 BC, his Middle Eastern lands entered a period of instability and
eventually split into an eastern part of Syria and Babylonia ruled by the
Seleucids and a western part of Egypt ruled by the Ptolemies. Both the
Seleucids and the Ptolemies were Hellenist (Greek) dynastic elites who ruled
great swathes of lands populated by people with quite different backgrounds
and religious systems. For much of the early part of this period, Israel was
ruled by the Ptolemies. It was in this period that the schools of the
Pharisees, Sadducees and the Essenes had their beginnings. By the second century BC, Israel
had come under the wing of the Seleucid Greeks. Between 175 and 164 BC, the
Seleucid Empire was ruled by Antiochus IV Epiphanes. This was a troubled time
for the Seleucids, as Greek power was beginning to give way to Roman.
Different Greek dynasties were also regularly fighting each other and
Antiochus spent much of his time fighting the Egyptian Ptolemies. It was
during one of his Egyptian campaigns that a riot broke out in Jerusalem that
forced him to return and quell in 167 BC. Following this, he decided to
strengthen his hold over the Judahites by Hellenizing them and forcing them
to worship Zeus as supreme God. They strongly resisted this, considering it
the utmost sacrilege and rose up against the Greeks again. There was a
terrible massacre in the Temple that is still commemorated to this day as the
festival of Chanukah. The result was a full scale rebellion by a Judahite
nationalist group called the Maccabees which defeated the Seleucid armies
sent against them. The next 100 years or so saw the
re-emergence of an independent Judahite state for the first time since the
conquest of Judah in 586 BC. This dynasty, called the Hasmonean dynasty, was
established by the Maccabees and lasted on and off until 37 BC. It was
recognised by the Roman senate in about 139 BC, though the Romans then
started to extend their own power into it. By 64 BC, the kingdom was
incorporated as Iudaea province under the Roman
governor of Syria. Rome’s hold on the Judean kingdom temporarily weakened as
a result of wars to the east and the Hasmonean kingdom reasserted its
independence for a while until 37 BC when it became a Roman client state. The
Romans were content to rule indirectly through a Roman procurator and Judean
Herodian kings under a system of local autonomy. But there is another twist to
the story. To the south of the kingdom of Judah, lay the non-Israelitish
kingdom of Edom. The Edomites were the sworn enemies of the Israelites and
Judahites and had helped the Babylonians defeat the southern kingdom of Judah
in 586 BC. With the fall of Judah, the Edomites extended their power into its
territory making Hebron their capital. But following the return of Judahites
from Babylonian captivity in 539 BC and their growing military and political
power under the Maccabees, the Edomites were driven back south-eastwards.
Then, in 109 BC, the Edomites were completely defeated by the Judahite king
John Hyrcanus and told that they would only be allowed to remain in their
lands if they converted to the religion of Judah. This the Edomites did with
various levels of enthusiasm, but began to extend their own power into the
very heart of Judahite society. Gradually they became a majority of the
population, observing the same religion but not being Israelites. They
started to control the Government and religious institutions, particularly
after 37 BC when the Romans established indirect rule and called the new
state Judea – an amalgamation of Judah and Idumea – the Edomite’s kingdom.
The Romans continued to rule through a Roman Procurator and local Herodian
kings, but these kings were no longer true Judahites. They were Edomites who
had usurped the Government and were despised by many ‘true’ Judahites. This
is why the Bible emphasises that Jesus was of the true Judahite royal line of
David and why Herod tried to kill him as a baby. Furthermore, the Pharisees
also came to be dominated by Edomites, again explaining Jesus’ antipathy
towards them. However, Judahite desire restoring their own position and for
independent nationhood remained in the background, especially amongst the
Zealots – a hard line nationalist group that opposed Roman rule. This was the world that Jesus of
Nazareth was born into. One of Roman
rule through proxy Edomite kings who were resented by the true Judahites and
a ferment of nationalism that wanted to reassert the full independence of the
Hasmonean period. The Judahites looked to a national saviour who would
re-establish their independence from both the Romans and the Edomites amongst
them. As mentioned in the
introduction, the term ‘Messiah’ means one who has been anointed with oil.
This process of anointing with oil is a symbolic recognition that the person
being anointed has been chosen by God to undertake some momentous task. The
Torah (the Pentateuch or first five books of the Hebrew bible) uses the term
to refer to Priests, Prophets and Kings. There are also prophecies referring
to the Messiah as a descendent of King David who will be anointed as the
leader (Moshiach). He was expected to usher in the
Messianic age – a golden age of peace and prosperity. At the time of Jesus,
the Messiah was expected to be a military leader of the Royal line of David,
who would overthrow Roman rule and replace it with an independent Israel. Orthodox Christians believe that
prophecies in parts of the Hebrew Bible do point to the Messiah as a
spiritual leader, indeed God in human form. Thus, Jesus does fulfil the
requirements of Messiah as set out in scripture even though he did not fulfil
the expectations of a military leader. There remains therefore a significant
difference in interpretation between mainstream Judaism and Christianity as
to what the Messiah would be. Joshua The best known Joshua of the Old
Testament is Joshua the son of Nun who succeeded Moses as leader of the
Israelites. Moses had led the Israelites out of Egypt towards the promised
land of Israel, but was not permitted by Yahweh to enter that land himself.
This task was to fall to Joshua who led the Israelite armies in their
conquest of the land of Canaan. So Joshua was seen by later generations of
Israelites as the warrior king who had conquered their land for them,
effectively created their homeland of Israel out of the land of the
Canaanites from whom the Edomites were descended. This he did with the
guidance and blessing of the Israelites’ god Yahweh, but also with his active
support in the battles. In his later years Joshua was also seen as a wise and
humble man who exhorted his people not to forsake Yahweh and is still revered
as a prophet. As mentioned earlier, his name was originally Hoshea, which
means salvation. But this became Yehoshua which means Yahweh saves or
delivers. Joshua was clearly a Messianic figure! Indeed, it was a return of the warrior
Joshua that the Zealots, were looking for as their Messiah. He would be the
one to deliver them from Roman rule through the active involvement of Yahweh. Much is made in modern Judaism
about how Jesus could not possibly be the Messiah, since he will be a human
leader and not God in human form. However, there is a growing view that some
forms of the Hebrew religion around the time of Jesus did see the Messiah as
divine. For instance, Philo of Alexandria (BC20 – AD50) sought to harmonise
Greek Pagan Philosophy with the Hebrew religion of his day. He tells us of
the Therapeutae, who practiced a form of mysticism based on an allegorical
interpretation of the myths of Moses and Joshua. Indeed, they interpreted
much of the Hebrew Bible as myth and allegory rather than literal fact as did
other Hebrew sects such as the Pharisees. The Therapeutae were also followers
of the Greek pagan philosopher Pythagoras. Philo himself was also known as
both ‘Philo the Hebrew’ and ‘Philo the Pythagorean’. Early Christians were
very interested in Philo’s ideas, many of them seeing him as a herald of
Christianity.
It is interesting to note that
St Paul was also a Hellenised Hebrew. The author William Smith wrote in 1911,
““The doctrine concerning Jesus was a pre-Christian one, a cult which at the
meeting of the centuries (BC100 to AD100) was widespread among the Hebrews
and especially among the Hellenists”. This divine leader was called Joshua
(Yehoshua or Yeshua) as that name symbolised someone through whom God spoke
and redeemed. It is thought that this cult emerged after the Judahites
returned from Babylonian captivity, where their religion had been influenced
by the ancient Aryan religion of Zoroastrianism. The Old Testament was
written down during the Babylonian exile and was influenced by the prevailing
Zoroastrian religion of their captors. When the Judahites returned to
Jerusalem, they brought with them a revised version of the old Israelite
faith, one that included Zoroastrian dualism, such as Satan as the force of
evil opposing God. It is also thought by some scholars, that a cult grew up
around a redeemer figure called Joshua based on the Zoroastrian Saoshyant. In
Zoroastrianism, Saoshyant means ‘one who brings benefits’ and is associated
with bringing about the final renovation of the world, the completion and
perfection of the process of creation. This was a different kind of Joshua,
one that emphasised his later life as a wise prophet rather than a military
leader. He was a saviour of a different kind. And so we have the story of the
gentle Jesus (Joshua) of the New Testament who is very different to Joshua
the warrior of the Old Testament. He preaches peace and compassion rather
than an eye for an eye and criticises much of the religion and religious teachers
around him. He preaches the message of Socrates that we should love our
enemies. Christos and Chrestos The term Messiah was translated
into Greek as Christos (Cristos), from which we get our English
word ‘Christ’. Both mean to anoint with oil and both are titles rather than
names. Before exploring the origins of the term Christos, it is worth noting
that the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible or the Septuagint (roughly the
same as the Old Testament), which was completed before the time of Jesus,
translates all references to Messiah as Christos. In other words, the use of
the word Christos to translate the word Messiah was not unique to Jesus of
Nazareth. Furthermore, the context of its usage was often in respect of
Israelite Kings and Priests who would have been anointed with oil. Christos
was therefore considered to be an appropriate translation for entirely human,
albeit exalted, people. However, orthodox Christianity understands Jesus as
Messiah very differently to orthodox Judaism. Using various prophecies of the
Old Testament (especially Daniel and Isaiah), orthodox Christians see the
Messiah as God in human form, who suffered death on the cross to redeem the sins
of human kind. This Messiah will rule over the earth in peace and justice for
a long period of time. His kingdom is the kingdom of heaven, not of earth. But the title Christos has its
origins in Greek paganism and not Jewish Messianism. The classical Greek
word, Cristos, predates both the New Testament and the
Septuagint by centuries. It is thought to derive from a proto Indo-European
root ‘ghrei’ which means ‘to rub’. For instance,
Homer uses the word ‘Christos’ to refer to rubbing one’s body with oil after
bathing. There is an old belief that
the Erythrean Sybil wrote down a poem in which the
first line of each sentence formed a prophecy that read, “IESOUS CHREISTOS
THEOU HUIOS SOTER STAURUS”. This literally means “Iesus, Christos, God, Son,
Saviour, Cross”. This is quite weird
when you think that it was made by a Pagan oracle several hundred years
before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth!
It is thought to refer to the coming down to earth of the Spirit of
Truth (the Christos) who will usher in a golden age in which God is revealed
to humankind. The similarity with the Indo European Zoroastrian figure of
Saoshyant is striking. In the mystery religions of
ancient Greece, the act of anointing with oil was a symbol of initiation. It was
an outward sign of a person having achieved spiritual enlightenment or union
with the inner dwelling Spirit of Truth – the Christos. The person thus
became a Christos following a long period of study and ascetic practice. We could say that a Christos is someone who
has obtained Gnosis, knowledge of God and of themselves, spiritual
enlightenment. A Christos is therefore
someone who has fully joined with the Spirit of Truth through a process of
subordinating the flesh to the spirit which perhaps is symbolised by the
crucifixion. In esoteric Christian terms, this can be seen as an expression
of the human Jesus being fully united with the Spirit of God. Through Jesus, God came amongst us
(Emmanuel). The title may go back even
further in history. Ancient Egyptian Pharoses were anointed with precious
oils as part of the mumification process which served not just to preserve
their earthly bodies, but to ensure they passed into the heavenly realms with
glorified spiritual bodies. This process of anointing was known as ‘karas’
and the mummies themselves often contain the words KRIST to indicate that the
deceased is a karast or anointed one. The
similarities of this to the term Christ are hard to ignore. Another title that dates back to
classical Greece is Chrestos (Crhstos). Cristos and
Crhstos differ from each
other only in the third vowel, both of which would have been pronounced
similarly – ee – as in Hreestos
with a soft ‘ch’ at the beginning. They are clearly related as Greek typically
uses permutations of common root words to express subtlety different aspects
of the same or similar concept. By the time of Jesus, though, Chrestos had
acquired an outward meaning of a kind, good or honourable man – a title that
would precede a person’s name much like ‘the honourable …’ in modern
English. Chrestos continues to mean
‘honourable, upright or virtuous’ in modern
Greek.
But, in earlier antiquity and
within the mystery religions, the term Chrestos had a deeper meaning than
simply a good man. It referred to a disciple of the religion, someone who was
actively seeking the Truth. As noted above, when he had achieved this, and
become joined to the Sprit of Truth, he was
anointed with oil to signify his change of status into a Christos. In 10 AD,
Philo of Alexandria speaks of ‘Theochrestos’, which
means ‘God-declared’ or one who is declared by God. He also refers to the
‘Logia Theochresta’, meaning “sayings delivered by
God”. There is here a clear connection between the words ‘Logos’, the Greek
Pagan title for the communicating mind of God, and the title Chrestos, the
one through whom God communicates. This connection precedes those famous
opening lines of St John’s Gospel ‘in the beginning was the Word’ by almost a
century. Many early Christians, including
some of the Church fathers such as Justin Martyr, actually called themselves Chrestians rather than Christians. Marcionites referred
not to Jesus Christ, but to Isu Chrestos. The
oldest known Christian inscription, dating from 318 AD, was found over the
doorway to a Marcionite Church and read, “The Lord and Saviour Jesus the
Good” – the title Chrestos being used rather than Christos. According to Lactantius, another early Christian writer, “it is only
through ignorance that men call themselves Christians instead of Chréstians." The title ‘Chrestos’ is used in
the New Testament in its mundane meaning of simply a ‘good man’. For
instance, Luke (vi: 35), where it means kind and merciful, ‘chrestos estin epi tou’. Also, in I Peter (ii: 3), where it is said,
"Kind is the Lord," ‘Chrestos o Kurios’. It is used by Clement of
Alexandria as simply meaning a good man; "All who believe in Chrest (a
good man) both are, and are called Chrestians, that
is good men." However, its more esoteric meaning is also hinted at.
Clement was originally a Platonist and this no doubt influenced his thinking
and use of language. As a former Platonist and student of the mystery
schools, he would have known that a Christos was the glorified Spirit of
Truth whilst a Chrestos was a disciple seeking that truth. St Paul also knew
this. In Galatians
iv: 19 and 20, he says “I am again in travail until Christ be
formed in you” (palin odino,
achris ou morphothei Christos). The deeper, esoteric meaning of
this is ‘until you find the Christos (Spirit of Truth) within yourselves’. Some Thoughts The Church proclaims that Jesus
Christ is both fully God and fully human. His divine nature is the Logos or
second ‘Person’ of the Trinity. But there are, and have always been,
different ways of understanding how Jesus was both human
and divine. The study above shows that it is possible, if not ‘orthodox’, to view Jesus as somebody who was born fully human (and
there is little doubt he did exist) but who joined together with the divine
Logos or Spirit of Truth at some point in his life through a process we may
call ‘enlightenment’ or ‘theosis’ – becoming God-like.
This would be the point that he changed from being a Chrestos to a Christos. Jesus
was himself unique, as are we all. But in this way of understanding things,
he isn’t the only person ever to achieve this union
with the divine. Indeed, his whole purpose is to lead us all towards this. |
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