Christ among the Messiahs — Part 3a

In the previous post we saw how Matthew Novenson in Christ among the Messiahs showed that

there were certain linguistic conventions in Jewish antiquity whereby a speaker or writer could refer meaningfully to the concept of a messiah by alluding to a small but significant group of scriptural texts.

This post looks at the question of discovering what word “messiah” itself meant, or what role a messiah was thought to have, among ancient authors and with special reference to Paul.

One approach to interpretation is to note the frequency with which the word is used. It is significant, says Novenson, that 1 and 2 Maccabees never use messiah language with reference to Judah Maccabee or his brothers, that the Epistle of James uses the word only twice (1:1 and 2:1) and the Gospel of Thomas not at all. Paul’s seven “undisputed” letters contain 270 instances of the word. This total is

more than he uses any other word for Jesus and more than any other ancient Jewish author uses that word. (p. 64)

So was Paul really “the most messianically interested of any ancient Jewish or Christian author”? Did he really mean “messiah” in any traditional Jewish sense or was it mainly a personal name he applied to Jesus?

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The Name-versus-Title Debate

If Paul used the word Christ as a title for Jesus then we may understand Paul as having a messianic Christological view. If he used it only as a personal name, however, then we may conclude that he had no such Christology and the word had no particular or traditional messianic meaning.

Most scholars have come down on the side of the latter argument — that Paul uses Christ as a proper name,

and that consequently the messiahship of Jesus plays little or no role in Paul’s thought . . . It follows, then, that for Paul “the Christian message does not hinge, at least primarily, on the claim that Jesus was or is the Messiah.” In fact, for Paul, “the Messiahship of Jesus is simply not an issue.” (p. 65, quoting MacRae, also Hare, Kramer, Dahl)

A minority of scholars, including N. T. Wright, have taken the contrary view and argued that Paul used the term as a title and that the messiashship of Jesus “lies at the very heart of his theology, ecclesiology, and eschatology.”

But Novenson identifies problems with the terms being debated. The debaters themselves have noted them but have paid little heed to them, writes Novenson.

Nils Dahl, the most important twentieth-century advocate for taking χριστός in Paul as a proper name, actually qualifies his argument at a crucial point. He writes that although χριστός in Paul is a proper name, “it is not a colorless proper name, however, but an honorific designation, whose content is supplied by the person and work of Jesus Christ.” A name, but not a colorless one. The caveat depends, of course, on the assumption that names are generally colorless but titles are colorful; therefore, Dahl has to make room for a different kind of name, a name that is not colorless. Similarly, Udo Schnelle accepts the name-versus-title rubric but is unable to conclude on one side or the other: “For Paul, Χριστός Ἰησοῦς is a titular name, both title and name. . . . When combined with Ἰησοῦς, Χριστός is thus to be understood as a cognomen (surname) that also always has the overtones of its original titular significance.” (p. 67, my emphasis)

Because interpreters have had to invent or invoke awkward concepts like “not colorless names” and “titular names” Novenson believes there is something wrong with the terms of the question itself. Two things wrong, actually:

1. there has been a faulty assumption about what names and titles are and how they work;
2. there has been a faulty assumption that names and titles were the only categories available to Paul

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How Names and Titles Mean

The first mistake has been to assume that while titles convey significant information about a person names do not. In actual fact the difference between names and titles is relative, not absolute. The evidence for this understanding is the way names can become titles and titles can become names.

They are not, in fact, altogether different kinds of words. On the contrary:

No sharp line can be drawn between common and proper names, the difference being one of degree rather than kind. . . . (p. 70, quoting Jespersen)

I am skipping over Novenson’s more detailed argument which relies heavily upon the thought of renowned Danish linguist Otto Jespersen. Novenson points out that the present majority opinion among students of ancient Greek onomastics (e.g. Michael Crawford, Anna Morpurgo Davies, Anne Thompson, Peter M. Fraser) is that this rule does apply to Greek nomenclature from the classical through to the late antique period. The evidence is in Homer, Aristophanes, Aristotle, Plautus to Pliny the Elder and Donatus among others. To illustrate, while our names like Blackstone, Greenhill, Browning, are long divorced from their geographic roots and are nothing more than surnames for us, there is evidence that in ancient Greek society these sorts of names had not lost their original meaning-impact, that the meanings of the names had a deeper psychological impact upon the ancient Greeks than they do with us.

[I]t is . . . clear that many ancient Greek names did, in actual use, connote certain attributes of their bearers. As Steve Mason has observed in a context nearer to Paul, “Orators—and Josephus—did not forfeit their right to exploit the literal meaning of someone’s name for the purpose of word-play, whether friendly or hostile.” In sum, in linguistics generally and in ancient Greek in particular, it is not the case that titles “mean” while proper names merely “refer.” In fact, there were a variety of conventions in ancient Greek whereby certain types of names could connote things. The problem of χριστός in Paul cannot be solved simply by ruling in favor of either name or title. A more thorough account of ancient Greek naming is necessary. (p. 72, my emphasis)

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Other Onomastic Possibilities

Modern speakers of English and German too quickly conclude that Paul’s use of χριστός must have been either a name or a title. Naming conventions in ancient Greek contained much richer possibilities.

Greek names

A single name was the norm for Greeks. Names could be simple or compound, identical with either a noun or an adjective, and open to a wide range of variations with the additions of suffixes. Compound names could appear in either order. Some names could have as many as 50 different forms.

Names could also be either theophoric (deriving from the name of a god — Dionysius, Kleonumos) or secular. The latter could derive from a host of sources: animals (Leontiskos, lion), weapons, body parts, plants, rivers, leadership, militarism, civic organization, saving or defending, strength, beauty or nobility, honor, reputation, abstract nouns, even undesirable physical characteristics.

In addition to these personal names was the patronymic, the father’s name that could be used for identification on certain occasions.

Then there was the “demotic” or name that identified the deme (civic region) of a person in cities that were organized that way.

When a person was abroad he could bear an ethnic name that identified his home city or region.

Paul’s χριστός, if it is a Greek name, is patently not a birth name, a patronym, an ethnic, or a demotic. It may be, then, that it falls somewhere within [a] category of secondary names. (p. 75)

These “secondary names” are distinct from the above class of names in that they are neither personal nor family nor geographical. They were usually flagged when used by an expression such as “who is called” (ὁ ἐπικαλούμενος) — as in Simon, who is called Peter (Acts 10:18). (Excuse this Semitic example to illustration is a Greek practice; it is mine, not Novenson’s). They could be applied to “public figures such a politicians, courtesans, and kings”. They were nicknames (the person was always acknowledged by a single name) and were not handed down in the family. Novenson will return to the possibility that Paul’s χριστός was such a name.

Jewish names

Tal Ilan classifies Jewish names of the Hellenistic and Roman periods as follows:

1. biblical names
2. Greek names
3. Latin names
4. Persian names
5. nonbiblical Semitic names in Hebrew characters
6. non biblical Semitic names in Greek characters

In Palestine the most popular names were names of the Hasmonean dynasty — Simon, Judah, Eleazar for males, “with just two names — Mariam and Salome — accounting for some 48 percent of all female names in the corpus.” Hellenistic monarchs who visited or resided in the east found their names being widely used, too: Alexander, Antigonus, Antiochus, Ptolemy, Philip, Bernice, Cleopatra.

Second names were not common among Palestinian Jews in the period under discussion, but Roman influence meant they were not unknown. Ilan provides the following types of second names:

1. Patronyms and papponyms (e.g. Bar Timaeus)
2. Geographic names (e.g. Eleazar of Narot)
3. Sectarian affiliations (e.g. Simon the Zealot)
4. Hebrew-Greek translation equivalents (e.g. Thomas Didymus)
5. Biblical name plus Greek second name (e.g. Judah Aristobulus)
6. Biblical name plus Latin second name (e.g. Saul Paul)
7. Given name plus nickname (e.g. Eleazar Goliath)
8. Titles that are used as second names (e.g. the elder, the younger, father, mother, the priest (Cohen))

Of course the last listed is the one of most interest for our investigation into the meaning of χριστός for Paul.

Alternative names were much less common among Diaspora Jews.

Roman names

Freeborn male Roman citizens followed the tria nomina convention:

1. praenomen (the personal name)
2. nomen/gentilicium (the clan name)
3. cognomen (approximating our family name or surname)

Some people acquired a second cognomen, really a nickname (agnomen). Thus the third emperor of Rome, Gaius Julius Caesar, took on the name “Little Boots”, Caligula. Other such nicknames: Pius (“virtuous”); Superbus (“haughty”); Pulcher (“handsome”).

A special form of nickname was the victory title. Such a title was an honorific identifying the place-name where a successful campaign had been fought. Examples: Africanus, Britannicus, Germanicus.

Roman influence led to inconsistent variations in naming practices among Greeks and others. Jews remained very little influenced since so few of them became Roman citizens. Some Greeks, on becoming Roman citizens, took a Roman form name while retaining their original Greek name as a second cognomen. But practices varied widely and sometimes creatively.

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Personal Names in Paul

If Paul did refer to Jesus with a real double name, it would be a striking exception to Paul’s own general practice. In the seven undisputed letters, Paul names some fifty-five people, and he almost invariably uses a single personal name for each, never an alternate name or a combined name. (pp. 80-81)

Contrast the Book of Acts where one reads double names quite often:

• Sergius Paulus
• Titius Justus
• Claudius Lysias
• Porcius Festus
• Tabitha Dorcas (Aramaic-Greek double name)
• John Mark (Hebrew-Latin double name)
• Simeon called Niger (i.e. nickname)
• Lucius of Cyrene (i.e. an ethnic name)

Compare Paul’s names:

• Phoebe
• Prisca
• Aquila
• Epenetus
• Mary
• Andronicus
• Junia
• Ampliatus
• Urbanus
• Stachys
• Apelles
• Aristobulus
• Herodian
• Narcissus
• Tryphena
• Tryphosa
• Persis
• Rufus
• Asyncritus
• Phlegon
• Hermes
• Patrobas
• Hermas
• Philologus
• Julia
• Nereus
• Olympas
• Timothy
• Lucius
• Jason
• Sosipater
• Sosthenes
• Chloe
• Apollos
• Stephanus
• Barnabas
• James
• Fortunatus
• Achaicus
• Silvanus
• Titus
• Aretas
• John
• Epaphroditus
• Euodia
• Syntyche
• Philemon
• Apphia
• Archippus
• Onesimus
• Epaphras
• Demas
• Aristarchus
• Luke
• Cephas
• Peter (if the same as Cephas, note Paul never uses the two names as a double-name)

As for titles, Paul uses them very rarely:

• 1 Cor. 11:32 — an unnamed ethnarch or governor
• 1 Cor. 11:32 — Aretas “the king”
• Rom. 16:2 — Phoebe, patron
• Rom 16:23 — Erastus, quaestor(?)
• Phil. 4:22 — Caesar’s household — “Caesaris” is functionally a title of the office, “emperor”, in this context
• Rom 16:1 — deacon
• Rom 16:7, Gal 1:19 — apostle

Wayne Meeks has explained Paul’s consistent use of Greek single names — mostly in greetings — as the language of “fictive kinship”. Compare Paul calling himself a father of his churches, and all members as brethren.

So if “Jesus Christ” were a real double name in Paul’s letters

then it would be the only instance of a double name anywhere in his letters. This fact does not decide the question, but it does raise further doubts about the majority opinion that takes χριστός in Paul as a straightforward second name. (p. 84)

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Christ as a Nickname?

If χριστός in Paul is neither quite a name nor quite a title, a few have argued that it is really a form of agnomen or nickname. Thus A. E. Harvey (1980) suggested that χριστός was not first attached to Jesus after his death but during his lifetime. In support he points to Mathew 1:16; 27:17, 22 where we read

“Jesus called Anointed”.

Harvey reaches his conclusion by comparing this form of name with

Simon called Rock (Matt. 10:2)

Thomas called Twin (John 11:16; 20:24; 21:2)

Jesus called Just (Col. 4:11)

Of course he is looking at the Greek — ὁ λεγόμενος — behind the English translations I am using.

So just as other persons were given nicknames (Rock, Twin, Just One) by their contemporaries in response to a particular quality or characteristic they saw in them, so people who knew Jesus in Galilee gave him the nickname of Christ. Such a nickname would explain, Harvey reasons, Paul’s lacklustre use of the word “Christ” — neither as a real personal name nor as a title.

The argument rests especially on a controversial claim about what χριστός would have suggested to Jesus’ contemporaries, namely, not an eschatological royal son of David (“Messiah”) but rather the range of functions attributed to the figure who is “anointed by the Lord” in the songs of Second Isaiah. (p. 84)

That is, Jesus’ contemporaries would have nicknamed Jesus χριστός because, as per Isaiah’s anointed one, he taught liberty and healed people.

But as we saw in the previous post in this series, the concept of messiah to the Jews of this period necessarily embraced a Jewish king to arise and usher in a new age. We have no reason to think that among the Jews of the day that χριστός would have conjured up the concept of one who was known only for preaching and healing. Yes, Luke 4:16-21 does make such a connection

but it is not attested widely in the early Christian sources, and much less can it be assumed to have been obvious to people who have not left us any literary record. (p. 85)

Further, Harvey is extrapolating from the Gospel of Matthew alone to describe the entire early Jesus tradition. Nor does Harvey’s argument really resolve the “name-versus-title” debate. He merely offers another form of name into the mix.

Novenson offers other reasons to dispute Harvey’s argument, but I will move on to Merrill Miller.

Miller likewise argues Christ was for Paul a nickname (or byname) but that it was assigned to Jesus after his death. But the nickname was not assigned because of what it said about Jesus — it did not describe any particular intrinsic quality of Jesus himself — but because the word, with its royal and eschatological associations, was an ideal brand name that lent to the new Christian movement an image of being led by a divine authority. Miller found a presumed precedent for his case in the nicknames given to philosophers of the various philosophical schools.

One of the problems with Miller’s argument is that the nicknames attributed to the philosophers of their respective schools in every case did describe some personal attribute of the philosopher. They were not chosen simply to add a formidable image to the school. Plato really was in some sense “broad”, Democritus “wise”, Lyco “sweet-voiced”, etc.

In almost every case the nicknames were acquired in their lifetimes, too, and not posthumously.

Miller repeats Harvey’s claim that the word χριστός had no “messianic” associations in the time of Paul — a view challenged by Novenson and outlined in the previous post. One scholar, Willi Braun, has challenged the logic of Miller’s argument by asking what good is a brand name if it does not evoke anything.

That is, if χριστός is empty of any biblical connotations, then how does it render theocratic legitimacy at all? (p. 87)

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This post is long enough. I will conclude Novenson’s discussion of the meaning of χριστός for Paul in the next post in this series. We will then look at specific instances — some of particular interest to the mythicist argument — of Paul’s use of χριστός and show how Paul’s attribution of it to Jesus was, despite one striking innovation, entirely consistent with the more general Jewish understanding of all that Messiah meant among the Jews of his day.

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