"the" (3)

[Stahlke, Herbert F.W.]

I agree overall with your analysis.  However, I've checked Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament, which also includes Septuagint and Hellenistic sources.  ho christos shows up all over the S in its "anoint as consecration meaning".  Ps.114:15, Ps.2:2, Hab.3:13, all over Samuel/Kings/Chronicles, and even in reference to a foreign king, Cyrus, in Is.45:1.    The word did not have this meaning in pre-Christian non-Jewish writing, but pre-Christian Hellenistic Judaism did extend the secular meaning to its sacred needs, antedating and perhaps establishing NT usage a couple of centuries earlier.

Herb



Subject:	Re: [FUNKNET] "the" (3)
In a message dated 8/30/04 1:32:51 PM, hstahlke at bsu.edu writes:
<< But I don't have a Classical Greek concordance handy, so I don't know how 
it would have been used in that body of literature where a notion of messiah 
didn't exist. >>

In Lidell-Scott, the first Greek references to "anoint as a consecration" are 
Christian. And I don't see it as a epithet in Greek before Christ.  Before 
that it's mainly about smearing oil on the body or white-washing a house or 
stucco -- nothing particularly religious.  The meaning of "anointing" in Greek 
seems pretty concrete and mundane at an earlier time.

So here it seems is a Greek word that changed drastically in its main meaning 
when it was used to translate a foreign word.  A small lesson perhaps in how 
new ideas travel as a change in words.

Steve