The Lord's Christ

[Kendall K. Down]

To us, the word "Christ" has only one meaning - it is a synonym for
Jesus the Messiah. To the early Christians, especially those who used
the LXX as their Bible, it was never more than a title.

This is born out by David's words after he cut off a piece of Saul's
robe when Saul fell asleep under David's nose in a cave. Urged to do
more than just cut a bit of cloth, David rejected the idea of
assassinating Saul.

"The Lord forbid that I should do this thing unto my master, the Lord's
anointed, to stretch forth mine hand against him, seeing he is the
Lord's anointed."

The Septuagint renders the verse as follows:

"The Lord forbid that I should do this thing unto my master, the Lord's
christ, to stretch forth mine hand against him, seeing he is the Lord's
christ."

The Hebrew, unsurprisingly, has the same sort of wording that makes us
do a double-take:

"The Lord forbid that I should do this thing unto my master, the Lord's
messiah, to stretch forth mine hand against him, seeing he is the Lord's
messiah."

The mind boggles just ever so slightly at the thought of bad king Saul
being either christ or messiah!

God bless,
Kendall K. Down

[Madhu]

* "Kendall K. Down" <tb85b7$1e69p$1...@dont-email.me> :
Wrote on Wed, 20 Jul 2022 06:54:48 +0100:

> To us, the word "Christ" has only one meaning - it is a synonym for
> Jesus the Messiah. To the early Christians, especially those who used
> the LXX as their Bible, it was never more than a title.
>
> This is born out by David's words after he cut off a piece of Saul's
> robe when Saul fell asleep under David's nose in a cave. Urged to do
> more than just cut a bit of cloth, David rejected the idea of
> assassinating Saul.
>
> "The Lord forbid that I should do this thing unto my master, the
> Lord's anointed, to stretch forth mine hand against him, seeing he is
> the Lord's anointed."

[snip]

> The mind boggles just ever so slightly at the thought of bad king Saul
> being either christ or messiah!

Saul is only one in a long line of "deliverers" sent and "anointed" by
God to deliver Israel, starting with Moses and the Judges. Saul happens
to be the first "king", (and it should be noted a reluctant king - was
neither his will nor God's will to set up a king). The role of the
"anointed" expanded from judging and delivering to ruling. Remember
from Psalms each was deemed a "son of god", automatically through the
power which came with the anointing. Now Saul could have fulfilled the
role in history, but failed, David could have fulfilled it and failed.
Hezekiah could have fulfilled it and failed. The prophesies about the
deliverer were only being added to. (I think it was after the exile, in
the second temple period that the hope of the promised deliverer
expanded to include the role of the priest)

In any case Jesus, when alive, answered to these expectations. Matthew,
for e.g., establishes that Jesus is *THE* Messiah who was expected (Luke
7:19-24). Christianity happened to capitalize on these first century
messianic expectations. The problem is that God seems to have postponed
the destruction of Satan and his earthly kingdoms by some 2000 years,
and Christianity adapted to this situation by cutting off the earlier
historical narrative and by starting from Jesus, - who manifestly was
not established as the ruler of Israel and the world at that time, and
so warranted a slightly different eschatology. I think this would
account for the dissonance.

[Kendall K. Down]

On 21/07/2022 06:58, Madhu wrote:

> Saul is only one in a long line of "deliverers" sent and "anointed" by
> God to deliver Israel

There is nothing in what you say with which I disagree. I was merely
highlighting the "takenaback-ness" of finding people such as Saul
referred to as "christos".