Christ: The First Two Thousand Years (eBook)

CHAPTER 1

What is a Christ?

Today the two words “Jesus Christ” are so familiar to so many people that it can almost seem as if “Christ” was the surname of “Jesus”. In fact, Jesus (which is a Latin form of a Greek version of the Aramaic name Yeshua) is a personal-name. Jesus/Yeshua was a first-century version of the older Hebrew name, Joshua. “Christ”, on the other hand, is a title. In Hebrew the word was mashiach and meant “the anointed one”, a person chosen by God. This word gives us the modern term: “messiah”. In Jewish history kings and high priests had sacred oil (olive oil) poured on their heads. In this way they were “anointed” and identified as chosen by God and therefore special. It was this meaning that lay behind the word mashiach. The Greek-speaking members of the early church translated this meaning into Greek, which was christos and from this we get: Christ. In the gospels (see chapter 3) the writers – writing in Greek – often make it clear that it is a title by using the words “the Christ” to describe Jesus.

With regard to language: in the lifetime of Jesus the day-to-day language in the towns and villages of Galilee (such as Nazareth or Capernaum) where he did most of his teaching would have been Aramaic; in the Jerusalem Temple and in the synagogues the official language of the holy books of what Christians now call the Old Testament was Hebrew; the government language of the Roman empire was Latin; but in the eastern Mediterranean the international language, which operated alongside Latin, was Greek. This is why the first Christian writings were produced in Greek and it explains why many words such as “Jesus” and “Christ” are Greek versions of Aramaic or Hebrew originals.

All of this means that Jesus is the man and Christ is the verdict on him and his significance. Clearly, not everyone in the first century thought that Jesus was the Christ. The same is true today. Few people today seriously question the reality of a first-century Jewish teacher and preacher named Jesus, because the evidence for his existence is overwhelming. But whether he was “the Christ” is quite a different matter. Today, as then, this question divides people. To a humanist and atheist such as Philip Pullman, the man Jesus has been distorted and misrepresented by the later Christian church. Hence the title of his 2010 novel: The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ. Pullman knew that he was rejecting all that Christians believe about the nature and importance of Jesus. He sought to sharply divide “Jesus” from “Christ”. To Christians, on the other hand, nothing could be further from the truth because they, in stark contrast, believe that the man Jesus was and is “the Christ”: the one sent by God to save the world. Even more radical than this, they believe that in this Christian definition of the Christ he was and is, in some way (see chapter 4), the same as God. For Christians, faith in Christ coincides with faith in God. This is very controversial. The battle-lines meet at the word “Christ”.

The focus of this book

This great debate about Christ is what this book is all about. It is an overview of the changing ways in which Christ and his nature have been understood and presented up to the early twenty-first century. The study of Christ’s nature is known as Christology. This book is not a history of Christianity, as that would be far too large a subject. Instead, it is an overview of the changing understanding and presentation of Christianity’s central character. It is as its title explains, Christ: The First 2,000 Years. That focus, by its very nature, touches on 2,000 years of history and belief. The study of people’s beliefs about who Jesus was and is and his significance can often appear arcane and impenetrable but this book will examine why this does not have to be so and why it is so important.

Of the current world population of about 7 billion, about 2.2 billion are Christians. They are named and defined by that Greek title (Christ) that has been applied to the Jewish teacher, Jesus. Their ideas about Jesus have had a massive impact on the world over the last 2,000 years and continue to do so. In the New Testament we see the beginning of this exploration of the significance of Jesus; but this exploration, this great debate among believers and non-believers, has continued ever since. As a result of this influence, the importance of Christ extends far beyond the Christian faith community and far beyond the religious turmoil of the first century in the eastern regions of the Roman empire. Jesus features in the pages of the Islamic Qur’an and his image can be found in Hindu temples. Christian (and non-Christian) concepts concerning him influence art, literature, and history in all parts of the globe. Across the world in the twenty-first century men, women, and children will live – and some will die – as a direct consequence of what they believe about Christ.

Some key questions

Before we explore any further, there are some important questions that need consideration:

• How was the Hebrew version of the title “Christ” (mashiach) used at the time of Jesus? What was its backstory? How did it resonate with first-century Jewish religion and politics?
• Did Jesus ever use it of himself?
• How was the term understood by the Greek-speaking men and women who rapidly became the majority members of what had started as a sect of Judaism, but soon became a separate religion called Christianity?

Getting some answers to these questions will help us understand the foundations for what has occurred since in the way Christ has been understood over 2,000 years.

“Christ” in the first century

Long before the title “the anointed one” was taken on by the Christians, the word and idea was Jewish. And it still is. It is found in the Jewish Bible, which in Judaism is called the Tanakh and by Christians the Old Testament. As we have seen, it was first used to describe the kings of Israel who were marked out as chosen by God by being anointed with oil. In this way, for example, the prophet Samuel marked out David as being God’s chosen ruler over the Jewish people.

When the Jewish Hebrew Bible was translated into Greek (c. 300–200 BC), the Hebrew word mashiach was translated by using the Greek word christos. This Greek-language version of the Jewish Bible is known as the Septuagint. As a result, the word “christ” was in the public domain, as it were, long before Christians began using it to describe Jesus. This is important to remember because, by the time of Jesus, many Jews in the eastern Mediterranean were beginning to lose their Hebrew language and were increasingly speaking Greek. For these Greek-speaking Jews, the idea of “a christ” was a familiar one.

Back to the early kings and priests… It was thought that when a person was anointed they received from God the wisdom and ability to do the things expected of them. This became particularly associated with the power and responsibility of being a king. The first three kings of Israel – Saul, David, and Solomon – are all described as being anointed by a prophet. In this sense each one was a mashiach (a messiah) although this is not how we would think of them today. Even the non-Jewish Persian king, Cyrus, was described in this way when he was believed to be doing the will of God. Over time, though, the word began to take on even deeper meanings. It began to be used to describe a future messiah-king who would appear at the end of time, restore Israel, and bring in a new era of peace and justice. This future messiah-king would be the one chosen by God to bring all this about. He would be a descendant of the famous King David and would make Israel great once more. Through a time of suffering and judgment (often described as the “Day of the Lord”) the Jewish people would finally be gathered together in a secure and peaceful ownership of their own land and there would be a golden age of peace. Foreign oppressors would be defeated and God’s people would experience a moral awakening and transformation. At times the hope extended beyond Israel and encompassed the whole world in this longed-for future age, as all people would come to recognize and worship the God of Israel.

The ultimate “Christ”

When Jewish kings fell short of the ideal expected of them and when, eventually, the Jewish kingdom itself was destroyed by the Babylonians (in 586 BC), this future messiah-king became even more important and longed for. He became a “messiah” in the way that we now understand the meaning of the word. The promised future End Time messiah would be related to – but in a different league to – the earlier anointed kings of Israel. He would be in an even more intense way God’s agent and representative. In this way the idea of the messiah-king both looked back to the “good old days” of great King David and also forward to a world that would be just and perfect. Sometimes one idea predominated; sometimes the other. In the Old Testament there are hints that this idea was...