who invented the name Jesus?

[Giuseppe]

So Paul began in 85 or 90 with his preaching, and Marcion was his direct disciple from about 120 on.

Cora, do you think that both Paul and Marcion, in your reconstruction, hated YHWH as an evil deity absolutely opposed to Alien God ?

Thanks in advance for any answer.

[davidmartin]

There is a church father who complains of people calling him Chrestos instead of Christos
Chrestos has the meaning of 'the good'
The father says people who do this are uneducated silly people
Maybe someone here knows who said this because i've forgotten so i can't quote the actual words. sorry.

Then you have the complaint of (was it Tacitus) of disturbances caused by 'Chrestus' in Rome around the time of interest

I have no opinion on this stuff. Considering the spiritual element of early Christianity ('annointed' - Christ) and connection to Hebrew 'messiah' its just asking for him to be named 'Christ' at an early date
On the other hand there's many places he might be called 'the Good' at an equally early date

Heck, even the Gnostics were aware of it? " as for me, I anointed him as the glory of the Invisible Spirit, with goodness"
do not both terms appear here together?

The Odes "Let us, therefore, all of us agree in the name of the Lord, and let us honor Him in His goodness"
Also drops goodness close to the mention of his name

So, in short, we are never going to know. Give up now and save yourself some time!

[mlinssen]

The chrestos / christos part definitely was secondary, now you mention it it would be fun to dig through the NT for that as well!
I'll throw in (holy) Spirit as well, could be fun, especially when we take the church fathers along with all that

[hakeem]

The Greek words χρηστός for the "good" and χριστὸν] the "anointed" where known and used hundreds of years before the Jesus stories were fabricated and before Justin and Marcion.

The Jews referred to their God Creator as Chrestos [ Good] and their Kings and Priests as Christos [anointed] as is shown in the Septuagint.

Septuagint

Septuagint Psalms 105.1--- Αλληλούϊα. - ΕΞΟΜΟΛΟΓΕΙΣΘΕ τῷ Κυρίῳ, ὅτι χρηστός, ὅτι εἰς τὸν αἰῶνα τὸ ἔλεος αὐτοῦ.

English Psalms 105. 1--- [Alleluia.] Give thanks to the Lord; for he is good: for his mercy [endures] for ever.

Septuagint.

Septuagint 2 Samuel 1.14 ---14 καὶ εἶπεν αὐτῷ Δαυίδ· πῶς οὐκ ἐφοβήθης ἐπενεγκεῖν χεῖρά σου διαφθεῖραι τὸν χριστὸν Κυρίου
English 2 Samuel 1.14--14 And David said to him, How was it thou wast not afraid to lift thy hand to destroy the anointed of the Lord?

It is clear that Jews worshipped their Good God Chrestos [ χρηστός] hundreds of years before Marcion and that there were Jews who were called Christos [χριστὸν , anointed] hundreds of years before the Gospels were fabricated.

[lsayre]

Does 'Isu Chrestos' translate properly to 'good man'? If so, that's a far different level of veneration than the exalted veneration of a 'Jesus Christ' (Jesus the Anointed, or Messiah Jesus'). It seems as if the transitional/evolutionary tendency would indicate clearly that Isu Chrestos came first.

[Jax]

It looks like Cora's premise that Marcion used Isu is flawed. From our own DCHindley.

I will probably regret doing this, but here is something I wrote on the subject in 2014:


Christos = anointed. Chrestos = "good," or "useful." It was Dan Mahar, in the pdf of his English Translation of Marcion's Galatians, available from Detering's site, who said:

One such creative liberty is the name for the Marcionite Savior, "Isu Chrestos" - "Isu" derived on the designation of Syrian Marcionites, the spelling for "Chrestos" (= the Good one) derived from an ancient inscription to a Marcionite synagogue.

The inscription, which is dated, says "The meeting-house of the Marcionists, in the village of Lebaba [near Damascus], of the Lord and Saviour IS Good - Erected by the forethought of Paul a presbyter, in the year 630" of the Seleucid era (318 CE). The arch is believed to be the oldest church of any kind discovered to date.

Συναγωγη Μαρκιωνιστων κωμ(ης)
Λεβαβων του κ(υριο)υ και σω(τη)ρ(ος) Ιη(σου) Χρηστου
προνοια(ι) Παυλου πρεσβ(υτερου) -- του λχ' ετους.

Marcionites believed that Jesus was a manifestation of a good, previously unrevealed, God who was not the same as the just God of the Jews who had fashioned the world as we know it out of preexisting chaotic matter. As the son of the Good God, Jesus was also "good".

"Mahar's "Isu" is his own invention, as the word for Jesus had been abbreviated in the inscription. He thought that it would correspond to the Syriac name Isu, known from the 4th century work Dialogue on the true faith in God, usually ascribed to its main character, Adamantius, but the inscription is in Greek so it actually suggests no such thing. It would have to have been inscribed in Aramaic before I'd go for an interpretation like that.

Besides a very few cases where NT mss have chrestos as a variant of christos, the only other case is the Roman writer Suetonius who said that Jews were expelled from Rome by Claudius around 49 CE "because they were making constant disturbances at the instigation of Chresto."

Per Wiki, which cites J. Boman, Inpulsore Cherestro? Suetonius’ Divus Claudius 25.4 in Sources and Manuscripts, Liber Annuus 61 (2011), ISSN 0081-8933, Studium Biblicum Franciscanum, Jerusalem 2012, p. 375 f., the exact phrase is "Iudaeos impulsore Chresto assidue tumultuantis Roma expulit," from Divus Claudius chapter 25 section 4.

Per the Persius site, "Chresto" derives from either the Genitive or Dative form of either

1) Chrestus , i, m.
I. [select] A mutilated form for Christus, Lact. 4, 7, 5; hence, Chrestiani, instead of Christiani, was used by many; cf. Tert. Apol. 3 fin.—
II. [select] A Jew at Rome under the emperor Claudius, Suet. Claud. 15; v. the commentt. in h. l.—
III. [select] A slave or freedman of Cicero, Cic. Fam. 2, 8, 1.

OR

chreston , i, n., = χρηστόν (useful),
I. [select] a name by which the plant cichorium was sometimes called, Plin. 20, 30.

"In addition to these qualities [of chicory], the magicians (Magi) state that persons who rub themselves with the juice of the entire plant, mixed with oil, are sure to find more favour with others, and to obtain with greater facility anything they may desire. This plant, in consequence of its numerous salutary virtues, has been called by some persons "chreston," (useful) and "pancration" (The "all-powerful") by others."


What all this means, is that the idea that "Chrestos" was some sort of general Marcionite title for Jesus (or Isu, for Dan Mahar), is pure conjecture, and was invented by Dan Mahar while demonstrating his reconstruction of Marcion's version of Paul's epistle to the Galatians.

Now Marcion is treated like a super being, able to bend time & place:

It is being stated that Marcion wrote the first gospel and the proto-orthodox felt compelled to offer their own version. That this first gospel was turned into canonical Luke as the proto-orthodox reaction to Marcion's version. I would ask "Why?"

Now I can understand the middle position, that canonical Luke as well as Marcion's Luke-like Evangelion both derive from a common proto-gospel, but the extreme explanations that are assumed as facts by some scholars just boggles my mind (but that's not hard to do).

[Jax]

Kind of begs the question of why they used the NS IE but wrote out the title Chrestou in full though.

[Jax]

I note that the abbreviation KU is used as well

[Jax]

The chrestos / christos part definitely was secondary, now you mention it it would be fun to dig through the NT for that as well!
I'll throw in (holy) Spirit as well, could be fun, especially when we take the church fathers along with all that

But if all we have is NS how can we know if the author was using Chrestos or Christos?

Am I missing something obvious?

[lsayre]

I believe some of the oldest complete Latin NT's use Chrestos. Some may even show evidence of Chrestos being overwritten with Christos, but this is from memory, and at my age memory can begin to be problematic.