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 CHRIST "Christ" is a Greek version of the Hebrew word, "Messiah". It literally means, "the anointed", and was a title that the early church applied to Jesus. The first Christians called Jesus "Christos" when they started to talk about their faith in Greek, which was the international language at that time. But what did they actually mean by "Messiah" or "Christ"? In the centuries before Jesus' time, the Jewish people developed a passionate belief in a coming time when things were going to get better for them. First, God would deliver them from foreign rule. There would also be a great spiritual revival. Part of this hope was belief in a coming Messiah, a man who would be God's agent in making it happen. He would be anointed in the figurative sense of being chosen by God for the task and the role, as priests and kings were sometimes literally anointed with oil in the Jewish tradition. More definitions |
Picture: calligraphy from an Ethiopian Orthodox prayer book. |
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