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Saturday, May 20, 2017

How The Meaning of "Christ" Evolved

        The word “Christ” comes from the Greek word, “Christos” which means “anointed one” and it is derived from the Greek word, “chrio,” which means to “smear or anoint.”  All of the original New Testament texts were written in Greek so "Christos" was used when translating the Hebrew word, “mashia”  also meaning “anointed one” into Greek. “Messiah” is the English equivalent of the Hebrew “mashia.”

     Ancient civilizations made no differentiations between civic or religious duties, and every city-state or empire had its pantheon of gods protecting it. The kings or emperors in power were considered chosen or “anointed” by their respective gods and it was assumed that if everyone worshipped their gods properly, the kingdom would be protected from its enemies and it would prosper.

       Ancient Israel was no different, except it started more as a monolatry, the worship of one god (Yahweh) that was believed to be superior to all other gods who were also thought to exist. When you hear phrases such as “lord of lords”, or “king of kings”, that’s a vestige of that early Jewish monolatry. Still, the early Hebrew kings, (e.g. Saul, then David, then David’s son, Solomon) were considered anointed by Yahweh, and therefore were messiahs or divine saviors and protectors of Israel.

          However, Judaism following the Babylonian exile became strictly monotheistic, and Yahweh was then considered the one and only God with power over all people and all things. Many of the Jewish leaders were weak and ineffective which led to the Jews being a conquered people time and again. This created a longing for a return of a messiah, or anointed leader, that was as powerful and majestic as David, thus, the interest in the “line of David.”

      This longing and expectation by Jews for a conquering messiah while living under the harsh rule of the Roman Empire was the reality of the Middle East into which Jesus was born and raised. As a Jew, he, too, probably expected a messiah, a ruler, anointed by the God of the Jews to establish this new kingdom on earth. This was the message of John the Baptist which Jesus supported and which he continued teaching after John the Baptist was executed. 

      The belief was that God’s kingdom would overthrow all the evil kingdoms of human domination and suffering, particularly, the Roman Empire. Jesus’ teachings on the coming Kingdom of God had to do with this kind of expected, all powerful kingdom, here on earth, under the direct rule of God. 

       It is possible that Jesus saw himself as God's anointed earthly ruler (messiah). He taught that human expectations would be reversed upon the arrival of the Kingdom of God, so that the last would be first and the first, last. The strongest evidence that this could have been true was the fact that Jesus was crucified. The Romans used crucifixion almost exclusively as punishment for sedition or rebellion against the empire.

        The apostle Paul never met Jesus and only directly interacted with Peter and Jesus’ brother, James, for brief periods of time. In fact, Paul had serious disagreements with both Peter and James because his teachings were significantly different from what Peter, James, and the Jerusalem Fellowship believed and taught. The Jerusalem Fellowship was the central leadership of the group of devout Jews known as Followers of The Way whose teachings were most directly tied to the actual teachings of Jesus, so the disconnect between the teachings of Paul and the Jerusalem Fellowship is an interesting contradiction. Needless to say, historically, Paul's teachings had greater impact on evolving Christian theology than did the teachings of the Jerusalem Fellowship following Jesus' crucifixion.

            They believed Jesus was the Messiah (or Christ) and expected him to return very soon to establish God’s kingdom on earth. They expected new members, whether Jews or gentiles, to conform to Jewish teachings and practices, such as circumcision, as well as the expectation of Jesus’ return as part of their faith commitment.

      Paul had a related, but significantly different vision. He taught that the Kingdom of God was in heaven, not on earth, where rewards were granted after one’s life on earth ended. Paul focused his evangelism on gentiles and did not require them to follow any Jewish practices. After all, if the end was near for everyone, why would anything of earthly origin be important? Paul referred to only a few of Jesus' earthly teachings. Paul always stated that his knowledge came not from the teachings of the earthly Jesus, but were visions from the risen Christ.  Jesus' resurrection indicated to Paul that Jesus was chosen by God to be the first of a new kind of spiritually perfect physical being into which all his faith filled followers could expect, themselves, to become.

      Paul interpreted Jesus’ crucifixion as a sacrifice that freed all sinners from their sin, provided they believed in Christ’s redemptive power. He got this idea from the Jewish celebration of Passover which required the sacrifice of a Paschal Lamb in remembrance of the flight of the ancient Hebrews from Egyptian slavery. This idea was supported by the Gospel writers who wrote that Jesus' crucifixion occurred in Jerusalem during the time of Passover.

      Members of the Jerusalem Fellowship were those who historically lived with Jesus, but when the Roman’s conquered and destroyed Jerusalem around 70 CE, the Jerusalem Fellowship ceased to exist. The Followers of The Way outside Jerusalem, however, continued their worship of Jesus as The Christ in synagogues spread throughout areas around the eastern Mediterranian. 

       Many of these assemblies had been established and shepherded by Paul so the vast majority of members were pagan converts who were used to accepting and worshipping new gods who performed miraculous deeds for their chosen people. Even the Roman emperors of that time were considered anointed by gods, sons of gods, saviors of their people, and capable of being resurrected from the dead. There is no reason to expect that these ideas would not then resonate with pagans as they made their conversion to Paul’s form of Judaism, the precursor to what was to become known as Christianity.

     The Christology relating to miraculous events marking stages of Jesus’ earthly life and the view of him as God on earth, are theological evolutions which occurred within the oral traditions after Jesus’ death and preceding the writing of the Gospels. The Synoptic Gospel writers then used these oral traditions as their foundations for producing their stories for their particular community of Jewish believers in Christ. These texts were used in synagogues as weekly lessons. The gospel stories of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection among the Synoptic Gospels, contain contradictions between the different books which clearly reflect the different ways these separate Jewish communities had come to view Jesus, long after he was gone.

      In the mid to late 80's CE, at a meeting of Rabbi’s and Jewish sages, a new blessing was added to the Shemoneh Esreh, the Eighteen Benedictions (blessings) that observant Jews recited three times a day. This new blessing referred to Jews who still practiced Judaism but believed that Jesus was the Messiah as heretics. In whatever synagogues this blessing was accepted, that effectively ejected Jewish followers of The Way from synagogue membership.  This was one of the events that gradually forced the division of Jews and Christ believers into separate and competing religions.

      By the time the Gospel of John was written, about 90 CE, the Christ of Jesus had been elevated from simply the Jewish expectation of a world leader messiah to the creative, eternal wisdom (Sophia) at the right hand of God, in existence from the beginning of time. In John, eternal wisdom was made humanly manifest in the life and acts of Jesus, the anointed, the Christ. Some scholars also believe that the bitter attitude toward “the Jews” expressed in the Gospel of John was a response to the exclusion of Jewish believers of Jesus as the Messiah from synagogue membership.


      Viewing the Gospels as literally true and as reports of historically accurate facts, reduces them to meaninglessness because of their factual inaccuracies and contradictions. However, viewed as metaphysical teachings, they reveal a history of developing spiritual awakening toward universal inclusion, wholeness, and justice for all. Anyone who unselfishly seeks eternal Truth and expresses unconditional love in all that he or she thinks and does participates in God’s anointing (Christhood), just as Jesus taught and demonstrated. (Matt 5:48)


       

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