Messiah/christ Anachronism

[ERayR]

I am proposing it was very strange to translate the word Christ, since the Nephites would have used the word Messiah. That was all they knew, they didn't know the title Christ if they were of Hebrew background at that time (100's of years before Christ coming). That is how all the scriptures referred to him. 

 

The title/name Christ is an English translation of what was on the Nephite records.  You are stumbling over mole hills.

 

Add:  Messiah is also a title.

Edited June 8, 2015 by ERayR

[Uncle Dale]

 

...Messiah is also a title.

 

It is very specific title, of course. The Davidic kings were anointed

at coronation -- and thus bore as one of their titles "Lord's Anointed."

 

When the Persians allowed the Jewish captive elite to return to

Jerusalem, there appears to have been an initial plan in place,

to re-establish the Davidic monarchy -- complete with these

Anointed Kings. But something went wrong and the monarchy

in Jerusalem was discontinued. A Persian governor ruled there.

 

That left the Temple High Priest the senior Jewish official in the land.

Those high priests were also anointed with holy oil when they were

ordained to their sacred office -- and bore a title similar to the kingly

"Lord's Anointed" -- in Hebrew -- "Messiah."

 

It wasn't just a title, in the same way that "tax-collector" or "captain"

was a title. It was a very specific claim to continued oversight by

the God of Israel, in and through the Jerusalem High Priest.

 

At some point it became clear that these high priests would never

lead the nation, as rulers. An attempt was made to unite king and

priest under the short-lived Maccabee rule, but those kings were 

not high priests and bore no blood of King David.

 

The "kingship of God" (in one sense, the "king-dom of God) seemed

to require an earthly vicegerent of Davidic blood -- an anointed

ruler whose own Ruler was God Himself. As early as Ezra's day,

it was expected that -- one day -- such a Davidic ruler would again

sit upon the royal throne in Jerusalem, and lead the nation.

 

He would be the "Lord's Anointed" -- in Hebrew "Messiah," and

would share authority with the Jewish High Priest. In the Dead Sea

Scrolls we see evidence of this belief in two messiahs, as early as

2000 years ago -- and those messianic expectations probably

reached back several hundred years before that time.

 

What has all of this history got to do with the Book of Mormon

saying that Messiah is a "name?" Very little, I suppose. As far

as I can tell, Mormons are typically taught none of this history.

At least, I myself, as a young Latter Day Saint, was so ignorant

of the nature and evolution of messianic expectations, that I

several times made a fool of myself in grad school, promoting

Book of Mormon and JST depictions of messiahship.

 

Did Mary and Joseph call out -- "Christ, it's time for supper; go

wash your hands!" -- or, "Hey, Jesus, dinner's ready!"

 

???

 

UD

[mass168]

Thanks to everyone for the interesting discussion. Good points are brought up on all sides. My curiosity really comes less from a search for anachronisms, than it does from musings on the translation process. As one person said, if you are looking for anachronisms, I know where a few are. 

 

It is just so interesting to me the words that J.S. chose (or didn't choose depending who you talk to). 

[longview]

If I remember right, "Jesus Christ" is Greek for "The Savior, The Anointed" or "The Anointed Savior" which validates His other title as "The Lamb Slain From Before the Foundation of the World".  This indicates that the Son of God was given this priesthood key/responsibility to atone for the Fall and all the subsequent sins, chaos, violence, confusion, etc.  I believe that Adam and Eve were also given priesthood keys to initiate the Fall (but had to perform this function with the veil of forgetfulness over their minds).

[Kevin Christensen]

Remembering that passage that started this was this, from Jacob, a consecrated Temple priest of the pre-exilic tradition, speaking about the atonement (chapter 9),explains

2 Nephi 10:2,3 ...God will be merciful unto them,and our children shall be restored, that the may come to that which will give them the true knowledge of their Redeemer. Wherefore, as I said unto you, it must needs be expedient that Christ--for in the last night the angel spake unto me that this should be his name... should come among the Jews.

And my post from Barker's The Great Angel: A Study of Israel's Second God, the chapter on The Name included this: "before the reform the Name had been simply a synonym for the presence of Yahweh."

So straight-forward substitution of equivalent meaning leads to this:

"Wherefore, as I said unto you, it must needs be expedient that the Anointed--for in the last night the angel spake unto me that this should be the Visible Presence of Yahweh... should come among the Jews."

The anointed high priest is the visible presence of Yahweh. The Kingdom of God is among you, but some people, eyes or no, just don't see it.

On the High Priests and Christianity, see http://www.margaretbarker.com/Papers/OurGreatHighPriest.pdf

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Bethel Park, PA

[Calm]

Somewhat like using the Word if I am understanding correctly.

[hagoth7]

Seems to me that the LDS explanation relies upon the precept

of gospel antiquity -- that is, that the "Plan of Salvation" goes

all the way back to the supposed primordial "Council of the Gods"

and Jehovah there offering to save man from his sin....

It actually doesn't rely on going back that far.

It's as simple as Joseph taking whatever Nephite term stood for "Anointed One," and translating it into English.

And "Christ" is what he "would be" called (at least in English), so for an English translation, that would be a reasonable and appropriate rendering.

If he had been translating into Danish, he might have rendered it "Kristus." If in Italian, etc., etc.

I don't see the need to look beyond that.

Edited June 9, 2015 by hagoth7

[Kevin Christensen]

Somewhat like using the Word if I am understanding correctly.

 

Yes.  And The Great Angel also has a chapter on Logos/Memra, the Word, as well.

 

In her recent book, King of the Jews: Temple Theology in the Gospel of John, one of the themes is that the Jews, such as Nicodemus, had so lost touch with the temple tradition that they couldn't understand what he was saying.  See John 3 for instance, about being born again.

 

Nicodemus answered and said unto him, How can these things be?

Jesus answered and said unto him, Art thou a master of Israel, and knowest not these things?

 

Jesus is wondering why the masters of Israel didn't get it, and Barker shows that a constant theme in John is that on this and various other issues, key of knowledge had been lost.  You must be born again.  Enter into the womb?  I am the bread of life.  He doesn't look much like bread to me.  Destroy this temple and in three days I raise it up again... but he spake of the temple of his body.  Tell us plainly, art thou the Christ?  But is what they meant by the Christ the same as what he meant?  Do we see anachronism is some cases because of the meaning implied by the context, or because we inappropriately apply an anachronistic meaning to words?

 

Jesus spake in parables... likeness.  Using symbols, which typically have meaning in Temple Theology, as Barker explains at length in her book.

 

The Hebrew of Ps 110 is unreadable, but the Greek and other versions seem to describe the "birth" of the anointed Melchizedek high priest in the Holy of Holies.  That is a context for what Jesus is trying to explain.  If we assume that "born" or "name" is not a word with various uses in different contexts, but is rather an emanation of meaning, the same to all observers no matter what, the result is blindness.  The notion of the spirit birth of the anointed High Priest in the Holy of Holies is something that a master of Israel should have been able to see in a discussion of being born again.

 

Best,

 

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

Edited June 9, 2015 by Kevin Christensen

[Calm]

Very interesting.

[Uncle Dale]

It actually doesn't rely on going back that far.

It's as simple as Joseph taking whatever Nephite term stood for "Anointed One," and translating it into English.

And "Christ" is what he "would be" called (at least in English), so for an English translation, that would be a reasonable and appropriate rendering.

If he had been translating into Danish, he might have rendered it "Kristus." If in Italian, etc., etc.

I don't see the need to look beyond that.

 

 

Of course there WAS a very early tradition in Latin America (Mexico, principally)

that the Apostle Thomas had carried the Gospel to the Aztecs, or their neighbors,

soon after Christ's resurrection.

 

Had that been true, there could have been pre-Columbians worshiping Christ

as early as the 1st century.

 

But, the Book of Mormon carries that knowledge back as far as the day and

age of Lehi and his sons. But then that knowledge is evidently kept confidential

until the time of Mosiah -- and, even after that, the full details seem to have

been understood only in the era when Samuel the Lamanite preached.

 

So -- did the Nephites have the "fulness of the Gospel" prior to the writings

of Mormon and his son? Evidently so -- during the Golden Age of Peace

spoken of in 4th Nephi. Did the Nephites comprehend the "antiquity of the

Gospel" before the time of Helaman Sr., and Helaman, Jr.? Who knows?

 

Then again, we might ask whether the "antiquity of the Gospel" and the

very existence of the Nephites are not themselves pious fictions? --- But, I 

suppose that is a topic worthy a thread of its own.

 

UD

[Okrahomer]

Then again, we might ask whether the "antiquity of the Gospel" and the

very existence of the Nephites are not themselves pious fictions? --- But, I 

suppose that is a topic worthy a thread of its own.

 

UD

 

http://www.mormondialogue.org/topic/65463-nephites-yea-or-nay/

[ERayR]

It is very specific title, of course. The Davidic kings were anointed

at coronation -- and thus bore as one of their titles "Lord's Anointed."

 

When the Persians allowed the Jewish captive elite to return to

Jerusalem, there appears to have been an initial plan in place,

to re-establish the Davidic monarchy -- complete with these

Anointed Kings. But something went wrong and the monarchy

in Jerusalem was discontinued. A Persian governor ruled there.

 

That left the Temple High Priest the senior Jewish official in the land.

Those high priests were also anointed with holy oil when they were

ordained to their sacred office -- and bore a title similar to the kingly

"Lord's Anointed" -- in Hebrew -- "Messiah."

 

It wasn't just a title, in the same way that "tax-collector" or "captain"

was a title. It was a very specific claim to continued oversight by

the God of Israel, in and through the Jerusalem High Priest.

 

At some point it became clear that these high priests would never

lead the nation, as rulers. An attempt was made to unite king and

priest under the short-lived Maccabee rule, but those kings were 

not high priests and bore no blood of King David.

 

The "kingship of God" (in one sense, the "king-dom of God) seemed

to require an earthly vicegerent of Davidic blood -- an anointed

ruler whose own Ruler was God Himself. As early as Ezra's day,

it was expected that -- one day -- such a Davidic ruler would again

sit upon the royal throne in Jerusalem, and lead the nation.

 

He would be the "Lord's Anointed" -- in Hebrew "Messiah," and

would share authority with the Jewish High Priest. In the Dead Sea

Scrolls we see evidence of this belief in two messiahs, as early as

2000 years ago -- and those messianic expectations probably

reached back several hundred years before that time.

 

What has all of this history got to do with the Book of Mormon

saying that Messiah is a "name?" Very little, I suppose. As far

as I can tell, Mormons are typically taught none of this history.

At least, I myself, as a young Latter Day Saint, was so ignorant

of the nature and evolution of messianic expectations, that I

several times made a fool of myself in grad school, promoting

Book of Mormon and JST depictions of messiahship.

 

Did Mary and Joseph call out -- "Christ, it's time for supper; go

wash your hands!" -- or, "Hey, Jesus, dinner's ready!"

 

???

 

UD

 

Thanks for the post but my post was to correct mass seeming misunderstanding that Messiah was a name and not a title.

[Avatar4321]

I am proposing it was very strange to translate the word Christ, since the Nephites would have used the word Messiah. That was all they knew, they didn't know the title Christ if they were of Hebrew background at that time (100's of years before Christ coming). That is how all the scriptures referred to him.

And in English we use Christ.

Typically when you translate into English you use English terms

[mass168]

How does this verse support or not support the differing points of view? Read in context, these are again the words of an angel, spoken to king Benjamin. 

 

Mosiah 3:8 And he shall be called Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of heaven and earth, the Creator of all things from the beginning; and his mother shall be called Mary.

[Uncle Dale]

How does this verse support or not support the differing points of view? Read in context, these are again the words of an angel, spoken to king Benjamin. 

 

Mosiah 3:8 And he shall be called Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of heaven and earth, the Creator of all things from the beginning; and his mother shall be called Mary.

 

 

In a somewhat light-hearted posting here, I asked what "name"

folks thought that he would have been called by in his younger

days? Did three wise men really come to his mother and her

husband, telling them that they should worship the child as

God Himself -- as "The Father of Heaven?"

 

Imagine being a  young Jewish boy growing up in Galilee, and

all through your juvenile years your family members -- your 

Hebrew language teachers -- your playmates and girlfriends --

are calling you "the Son of God."

 

Or, if not that, then at least remarking among themselves that

Mother Mary is treating you like The Almighty personified.

 

My imagination simply cannot extend THAT far. My conclusion

is that nobody called him "Christ" as a name or as a title until

very near the time of his demise.

 

So -- way off in America, did the Mulekites and Lehites learn

that the coming Jewish Messiah would have a mother named

"Mary?" A strange prophetic prediction -- given for -- what

possible reason? What good did it do the Nephites? It reminds

me of the passage in the Hebrew Bible where the emperor

Cyrus is identified by name, seemingly well before he was ever 

a gleam in his father's eye. Can we trust that scriptural sentence

as being a true revelatory miracle? Or -- was it a misleading

entry, much later inserted by the Great  & Abominable Church,

in order to distract from some plain and precious truth, deleted

from the very next sentence?

 

Do Mormons ever ponder these things?

Probably not.

 

UD

[Kevin Christensen]

How does this verse support or not support the differing points of view? Read in context, these are again the words of an angel, spoken to king Benjamin. 

 

Mosiah 3:8 And he shall be called Jesus Christ, the Son of God, the Father of heaven and earth, the Creator of all things from the beginning; and his mother shall be called Mary.

Given that the Book of Mormon has close ties to First Temple tradition, it seems to me that this would mean quite a lot, especially since Benjamin's discourse is given at the temple, and interweaves themes of Day of Atonement, Tabernacle, Sabbath, and Jubilee, with Benjamin taking the role of the high priest on the Day of Atonement, I find it very meaningful. (See Welch in King Benjamin's Discourse for details.)

Jesus/Yeshuah/Joshua are the same name, and given that both mean "Yahweh Saves."

Christ means anointed, and in temple theology refers specifically to the anointing of the high priest, who represents Yahweh on the Day of Atonement personally performing the at-one-ment.

Barker's Christmas: The Original Story, 106 has this:

When Eusebius was writing a commentary on the Psalms early in the fourth century, he knew a version of Psalm 110.3 that had 'Mary' where the present Hebrew text has 'womb.' The Hebrew mrhm, 'from the womb.' had been read as mrym, 'Miriam,' that is Mary.

Note that Barker's reading of Psalm 110 has to do with the birth of the High Priest in the Holy of Holies.

And notice that Miriam (Sister of Moses) in Exodus becomes a symbol of the Wisdom tradition, and disappears from the narrative shortly after Moses marries the foreign women. Barker sees significance in that.

And of course, the idea of monotheistic Jews writing about the Son of God seemed absurd until that particular expression shows up in the Dead Sea Scrolls. See John Tvedtnes, in The Most Correct Book, 298. 4Q246 column 2 has "He will be called son of God and they will call him son of the Most High..."

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Bethel Park, PA

Edited June 12, 2015 by Kevin Christensen

[Robert F. Smith]

............................................................................................  

 

The RLDS never canonized the Book of Abraham, so the whole

Council of the Gods story is alien to Reorganized theology.

Nevertheless, the church I belonged to did promote the JST

as the "one true Bible," and as a young man I went off to

Protestant graduate seminary steeped in "Book of Moses"

tenets.

..........................................................................................................

 

Needless to say, Mormons enrolling in advanced historical

and scriptural studies in accredited secular universities will

NOT encounter the "antiquity of the gospel" concept in their

coursework and readings (other than as a pseudo-biblical

notion peculiar to the Latter Day Saints and some other

minor Christian denominations).

...................................................

It may well be that third rate Protestant seminaries were not particularly well-informed on ancient Near Eastern precursors to biblical lore, and did not emphasize advanced Hebrew studies back in those days, and perhaps not even today in some cases.  Depends to a great extent on the normative preconceptions of those who run such schools.   I received my initial training in such matters in 1965 at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and my first professor was the head of the Dept of Assyriology, who presented the direct parallels to us.  Even my grandpa, who studied at Ohio Wesleyan and at Boston University School of Theology in the early 20th century would have been woefully ignorant of the astonishing developments taking place in Assyriology in his own time, not to speak of later developments in Ugaritic, and then in Dead Sea Scroll studies just before his death.  He was far too concerned with his responsibilities as a Methodist minister.  However, we moderns have no excuse.

 

Today, the notion of the Council of the Gods is not only standard fare in biblical studies, but it is a matter of consensus now that Classical Israelites and their immediate predecessors were polytheists..  One can quibble about the way in which the Prophets and the Temple Priesthood interpreted such matters, and what the official religion finally came to be in normative Judaism, but that no longer controls the facts on the ground for most archeologists and biblical scholars.

 

You might want to take a look at some of the scholarship on such matters:

 

Albrektson, Bertil, History of the Gods: An Essay on the Idea of Historical Events as Divine Manifestations in the Ancient Near East and Israel, CBOTS 1 (Gleerup, 1967/ reprint Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2011).

 

Assmann, Jan, The Search for God in Ancient Egypt, trans. D. Lorton (Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press, 2001), from his 1984 Ägypten: Theologie und Frömmigkeit einer frühen Hochkultur. 

 

Barker, Margaret, The Older Testament: The Survival of Themes from the Ancient Royal Cult in Sectarian Judaism and Early Christianity (London: SPCK, 1987).

 

Barker, Margaret, The Great Angel: A Study of Israel’s Second God (London: SPCK, 1992).

 

Barker, Margaret, “Joseph Smith and Preexilic Israelite Religion,” paper delivered in 2005, at Library of Congress in Washington, DC., published in J. Welch, ed., The Worlds of Joseph Smith: A Bicentennial Conference at the Library of Congress (Provo: BYU Press, 2006), 69-82.

 

Barr, James, Holy Scripture: Canon, Authority, Criticism (Phila.: Westminster Press, 1983).

 

Becking, Bob, Karel van der Toorn, and Pieter W. van der Horst, eds., Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible (Leiden: Brill, 1999).

 

Bembry, Jason, Yahweh’s Coming of Age (Winona Lake: Eisenbrauns, 2011). 

 

Bokovoy, David E., Authoring the Old Testament: Part One, Genesis-Deuteronomy (SLC: Kofford, 2014).

 

Collins, John J., “A Throne in the Heavens: Apotheosis in Pre-Christian Judaism,” in J. J. Collins & M. Fishbane, eds., Death, Ecstasy, and Other Worldly Journeys (N.Y.: SUNY Press, 1995), 43-58.

 

Dietrich, Manfried, “Das biblische Paradies und der babylonische Tempelgarten,” in B. Janowski & Beate Ego, eds., Das biblische Weltbild und seine altorientalischen Kontexte (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001), 281-323.

 

Ehrman, Bart D., The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 4th ed. (Oxford University Press, 2008).

 

Finlan, Stephen, and Vladimir Kharlamov, eds., Theosis: Deification in Christian Theology, Princeton Theological Monograph Series (Pickwick Publ./Wipf & Stock, 2006).

 

Flusser, David, “Healing Through the Laying on of Hands in a Dead Sea Scroll,” in his Judaism and the Origin of Christianity (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1988), 21-22, reprinted from Israel Exploration Journal, 7 (1957), 107-108.

 

Garr, W. Randall, In His Own Image and Likeness, Culture and History of the Ancient Near East 15 (Leiden: Brill, 2003).  Plurality of God and Divine Assembly (17-92).

 

Green, Alberto R. W., The Storm-God in the Ancient Near East, BSUCSD 8 (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 2003).  Yahweh as a storm-god, the self-existing creator of all that is.

 

Hamori, Esther J., "When Gods Were Men": The Embodied God in Biblical and Near Eastern Literature, Beihefte zur Zeitschrift für die alttestamentliche Wissenschaft 384  (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2008).

 

Hanson,  Paul D., “Rebellion in Heaven, Azazel, and Euhemeristic Heroes in 1 Enoch 6–11,” Journal of Biblical Literature 96 (1977): 195–233.

 

Heiser, Michael S., “The Divine Council in Late Canonical and Non-Canonical Second Temple Jewish Literature,” doctoral dissertation (Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison, 2004).

 

Heiser, Michael S., “Monotheism, Polytheism, Monolatry, or Henotheism?  Toward an Assessment of Divine Plurality in the Hebrew Bible,” Bulletin of Biblical Research (2008). 

 

Kessler, Martin, Battle of the Gods: The God of Israel versus Marduk of Babylon: A Literary/ Theological Interpretation of Jeremiah 50-51, Studia Semitica Neerlandica 42 (Assen: Van Gorcum, 2003).

 

Krister, M., J. Geiger, N. Na’aman, and Sh. Shaked, eds., Ancient Gods, Polytheism in Eretz Israel and Neighboring Countries from the Second Millennium BCE to the Islamic Period (Yad Yitzhaq Ben-Zvi, 2008). (Hebrew) 

 

Lemaire, André, The Birth of Monotheism: The Rise and Disappearance of Yahwism (BAS, 2007; also available as Biblical Archaeology Society, item 7H37), trans. of Naissance du Monothéisme: Point de vue d’un historien (Bayard, 2003).

 

Levine, Amy-Jill, “Jesus Who?” Moment, 27/4 (Aug 2002), 48-54,74-75. 

 

L’Heureux, Conrad E., Rank Among the Canaanite Gods, Harvard Semitic Monograph 21 (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press/Ann Arbor: Edwards Bros., 1979).

 

Morgenstern, Julian, “The Mythological Background of Psalm 82,” Hebrew Union College Annual, 14 (1939), 29-126.

 

Mullen, E. Theodore, Jr., The Assembly of the Gods: The Divine Council in Canaanite and Early Hebrew Literature, Harvard Semitic Monographs 24 (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press/Ann Arbor: Edwards Bros., 1980).  His published Harvard dissertation.

 

This should be enough for a start, Dale.  Too long already.  Let me know if you need more examples.  We can continue with the Ns.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Meadowchik]

I agree that it is a title; however, it was also a name--please see Matthew 1:16 (KJV)

16 And Jacob begat Joseph the husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ.

 

And it's fundamental that he is Christ, for "the Christ." The fact that he merits the name and title is the point, or atleast seems to be a revolutionary point that the angel is making.