Christ as a name

[Christy (Christy Hemphill)]

@Russell2

And yet, you could address someone as Master, or Chief, or Chef, or Sir, or Madam, with no article or possessive pronoun.

Right, because that is a vocative, and vocatives don’t take articles in English.

[Christy (Christy Hemphill)]

@Russell2

messiah just means high priest, and it speaks of many different messiahs, prior to The Messiah who shall rule forever. The question I’m left with is was there a linguistic marker (such as the capitals I’ve just used) to distinguish between the many mortal messiahs and the divine eschatological Messiah?

I think Messiah means Anointed One, and anointing had several significances. When people talked about the Anointed One, there was a whole messianic concept built by the discourse in their culture and their eschatological expectations.

Maybe it has something to do with monadic nouns (things for which there is only one member of the category in view), which often occur with the article (80% of the time) even though it isn’t needed to specify which one: God, earth, moon, sun, heaven would be examples of monadic nouns.

Monadic Nouns | Daily Dose of Greek

[Russell2]

[beaglelady]

Christ is a title, with or without an article.

[HRankin (Hillary Rankin)]

the only one that comes to mind for me is “you are the Christ, the Son of the Living God.” Interesting thought for sure. I think we think of it as his name, but it really is like a title.

[Relates (Roger A. Sawtelle)]

@Christy

But it’s the same with Rabbi or Lord. Titles often refer to individuals. You can say “The Queen will be in London for the wedding” and be using her title in place of Queen Elizabeth to refer to her. Or Jesus with “my Father in Heaven.” or “the Father will give whatever you ask.” Father is a title of sorts and yes it functions as a “name” in that is refers to an individual as a proper noun. But names are generally more unique to individuals than titles used in place of names to refer to individuals.

The way I was taught, back in the Dark Ages, a title is used as a proper name, which means that it is capitalized, when it refers to only one person and therefore takes the place of his/her name. The classic example is my father which is not capitalized and “Father and I,” which is.

Under this rule “God” is a title and also n proper name, because when we write “God” we mean only “our heavenly Father,” unless we consider Allah to be God also.

Messiah and Christ are both titles, meaning “the anointed” Anointing the head with oil was the sign that YHWH had Chosen that person for a special task, as when Samuel anointed first Saul and then David to be the King of Israel. Psalm 2 was used during the anointing and coronation of the King of Judah as YHWH’s Messiah and Son.

Jesus never claimed to be God, but He clearly claimed to be the Messiah, which can also be translated Savior, as in the Person Chosen by YHWH to Save God’s People. This brought Him into conflict with the Jewish establishment, who did not want to concede leadership to Him, esp. when He challenged their authority. It also brought Him into conflict with the Romans who did not tolerate anyone who seemed to reject their rule. Of course the Jews generally would have followed Him if He “saved” them from the foreign rule of the Romans. Most of them did not when He introduced the New Covenant of His Death and Resurrection, which made possible the reconciliation of all humans with YHWH and each other in the Kingdom of God.

The biggest issue I see is people thinking that Christ is the last name of Jesus. Jews and many people did not have last names until much later, but compound names were common like Simon Peter. That means that many might be calling Jesus the Savior without meaning it, and thus be taking the Name of God in vain.