What Christ actually means

Anointing was a job ceremony with a physical component. Samuel takes a flask of oil, pours it over Saul's head, and kisses him. Oil runs into the beard and down the collar of the robe, as Psalm 133 describes it. Priests were anointed, prophets occasionally, and kings above all. The man with oil in his hair was the man God had selected for the post.

The Hebrew title is mashiach, the anointed one, and at first it pointed at no future figure at all. Saul is Yahweh's anointed, which is why David will not lift a hand against him. So is David. So, remarkably, is Cyrus the Persian in Isaiah 45:1, a foreign emperor who had never heard of Yahweh and gets the title anyway because he does the job. The word names an appointment, and it stays on a man for as long as he holds the post.

The Dead Sea community expected two anointed ones, one priestly and one royal, and left a rule book settling which of them sat down first at the table. Others in the same period wanted a military deliverer who would clear the Romans out. The term had narrowed to a single awaited figure by then, though nobody agreed on his job description. Rabbinic tradition remembers Rabbi Akiva naming Simon bar Kokhba as the anointed one during his revolt against Rome, a century after Jesus, which shows what the word still meant to Jewish ears: a king with an army, and a claim that could get you killed.

The Septuagint translators reached for Christos, built on a verb for smearing or rubbing something with oil, the same word a Greek would use for working ointment into a wound. Latin took it over as Christus, English left it untranslated, and twenty centuries of use have worn the title down into something most people hear as a name. How early that wearing began is disputed. Some scholars read Christos in Paul as already close to a proper name; Matthew Novenson has argued at length that it holds its honorific force throughout, and the question is not settled.

Jesus Christ parses in English as a first name followed by a last name, which is how most readers first hear it. First-century Jews had no surnames. A man was identified by his father, as in Simon son of Jonah, or by his village, as in Jesus of Nazareth, or by his trade. Christ was never in that slot, and English readers put it there anyway.

The result is that a large share of New Testament sentences lose their point. When Peter says you are the Christ, an English reader hears a name being confirmed rather than a throne being claimed. When Pilate has the charge posted over the execution stake, both the mockery and the danger depend on the title naming a job.

Familiarity finishes the work. Christ is a word people have heard since childhood, in carols and in swearing, and heavily worn words stop carrying anything. A reader can move through a chapter of Paul without once noticing that a political claim is being pressed in every second line.

The New Ground English Translation prints The One wherever the Greek has Christos, with a note at the first occurrence explaining the anointing. The aim is to make the reader stop. The One is not a phrase anyone has heard a thousand times, so it cannot be skimmed past, and it holds the singularity the title carried for people who had been waiting on one specific person for generations.

Put it into Matthew 2:4. He called together all the chief priests and legal experts of the people and demanded to know where The One was supposed to be born. With Christ in that sentence it reads like a name being looked up in a register. With The One, the reason a sitting king is frightened becomes obvious on the first pass.

Something goes missing in the exchange. The One gives up the oil. A reader meeting it cold learns that this person is the awaited one but not that the title came from a ceremony involving a horn of olive oil, which is why the note is attached rather than optional. Every rendering of this word surrenders something. Christ surrenders the meaning. Messiah surrenders the fact that the text is in Greek. Anointed One surrenders readability. The One surrenders the ceremony and keeps the claim.

Get rid of the old yeast so you can be the fresh batch of dough that you really are. Because the One who is our Passover lamb has already been sacrificed for us.

1 Corinthians 5:7

But for us there is one God — the Father — from whom everything exists and for whom we live. And there is one Lord — Jesus the One — through whom everything exists and through whom we live.

1 Corinthians 8:6

and they all drank the same spiritual drink. They were drinking from a spiritual rock that traveled with them — and that rock was The One.

1 Corinthians 10:4

But I want you to understand that the One is the head of every man, the man is the head of the woman, and God is the head of the One.

1 Corinthians 11:3