The Old Testament ( OT ) is the first division of the Christian biblical canon , which is based primarily upon the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible , or Tanakh, a collection of ancient religious Hebrew and occasionally Aramaic writings by the Israelites . The second division of Christian Bibles is the New Testament , written in Koine Greek .
67-458: Masih is Arabic for ' Christ ' or ' Messiah '. Christians, Muslims and members of related religions use Masih as a religious title for Jesus of Nazareth. Also spelled Mesih or Maseeh , it is used as a proper name in many languages. The term also appears in the Christian name Abdul Masih ("Servant of Christ"). Christ (title) Christ , used by Christians as both a name and
134-647: A different order for the books in Nevi'im and Ketuvim . This order is also cited in Mishneh Torah Hilchot Sefer Torah 7:15. The order of the books of the Torah is universal through all denominations of Judaism and Christianity. The disputed books, included in most canons but not in others, are often called the Biblical apocrypha , a term that is sometimes used specifically to describe
201-866: A few historic Protestant versions; the German Luther Bible included such books, as did the English 1611 King James Version. Empty table cells indicate that a book is absent from that canon. Several of the books in the Eastern Orthodox canon are also found in the appendix to the Latin Vulgate , formerly the official Bible of the Roman Catholic Church. Some of the stories of the Pentateuch may derive from older sources. Scholars such as Andrew R. George point out
268-676: A name, one part of the name " Jesus Christ ", though it was originally a title ("the Messiah"). Its usage in "Christ Jesus" emphasizes its nature as a title. Compare the usage "the Christ". The spelling Christ in English became standardized in the 18th century, when, in the spirit of the Enlightenment , certain words' spelling changed to fit their Greek or Latin origins. Before that, scribes writing in Old and Middle English usually used
335-525: A professor of Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism at the University of Edinburgh , identifies the Old Testament as "a collection of authoritative texts of apparently divine origin that went through a human process of writing and editing." He states that it is not a magical book, nor was it literally written by God and passed to mankind. By about the 5th century BC, Jews saw the five books of
402-608: A school known as biblical minimalism rejected the historical value of the Hebrew Bible for the study of ancient Israel during the Iron Age, "but this extreme approach was rejected by mainstream scholarship." The first five books— Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , book of Numbers and Deuteronomy —reached their present form in the Persian period (538–332 BC) , and their authors were the elite of exilic returnees who controlled
469-476: A set period and be followed by the other-worldly age or World to Come . Some thought the Messiah was already present, but unrecognised due to Israel's sins; some thought that the Messiah would be announced by a forerunner, probably Elijah (as promised by the prophet Malachi , whose book now ends the Old Testament and precedes Mark 's account of John the Baptist ). However, no view of the Messiah as based on
536-500: A source of some key Christological connections; e.g., Ephesians 3:17–19 relates the love of Christ to the knowledge of Christ , and considers the love of Christ as a necessity for knowing him. There are also implicit claims to him being the Christ in the words and actions of Jesus. The Hellenization Μεσσίας (Messías) is used twice to mean "Messiah" in the New Testament: by the disciple Andrew at John 1:41 , and by
603-644: A title , unambiguously refers to Jesus . It is also used as a title , in the reciprocal usage "Christ Jesus", meaning "the Messiah Jesus" or "Jesus the Anointed ", and independently as "the Christ". The Pauline epistles , the earliest texts of the New Testament , often call Jesus "Christ Jesus" or just "Christ". The concept of the Christ in Christianity originated from the concept of
670-570: Is an English form of χ-mas, itself an abbreviation for Christ-mas. The Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ) and the OED Supplement have cited usages of "X-" or "Xp-" for "Christ-" as early as 1485. The terms "Xpian" and "Xren" have been used for "Christian", "Xst" for "Christ's" "Xρofer" for (Saint) Christopher and Xmas, Xstmas, and Xtmas for Christmas. The OED further cites usage of "Xtianity" for "Christianity" from 1634. According to Merriam-Webster's Dictionary of English Usage , most of
737-695: Is based on the belief that the historical Jesus is also the Christ , as in the Confession of Peter . This belief is in turn based on Jewish understandings of the meaning of the Hebrew term Messiah , which, like the Greek "Christ", means "anointed". In the Hebrew Scriptures, it describes a king anointed with oil on his accession to the throne: he becomes "The L ORD 's anointed" or Yahweh's Anointed. By
SECTION 10
#1732764966611804-716: Is coming into the world", signifying that both titles were generally accepted (yet considered distinct) among the followers of Jesus before the raising of Lazarus . During the Sanhedrin trial of Jesus , it might appear from the narrative of Matthew that Jesus at first refused a direct reply to the high priest Caiaphas 's question: "Are you the Messiah, the Son of God?", where his answer is given merely as Σὺ εἶπας ( Su eipas , "You [singular] have said it"). Similarly but differently in Luke, all those present are said to ask Jesus: 'Are you then
871-530: Is known, though there is plenty of speculation. For example, it is speculated that this may have provided motivation for canon lists and that Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus are examples of these Bibles. Together with the Peshitta and Codex Alexandrinus , these are the earliest extant Christian Bibles. There is no evidence among the canons of the First Council of Nicaea of any determination on
938-610: Is neither read nor held among the Hebrews, but does not explicitly call it apocryphal or "not in the canon". The Synod of Hippo (in 393), followed by the Council of Carthage (397) and the Council of Carthage (419) , may be the first council that explicitly accepted the first canon which includes the books that did not appear in the Hebrew Bible ; the councils were under significant influence of Augustine of Hippo , who regarded
1005-630: Is one of Christianity's highest holy days. Old Testament The Old Testament consists of many distinct books by various authors produced over a period of centuries. Christians traditionally divide the Old Testament into four sections: the first five books or Pentateuch (which corresponds to the Jewish Torah ); the history books telling the history of the Israelites, from their conquest of Canaan to their defeat and exile in Babylon ;
1072-423: Is to worship , or the one "true God", that only Yahweh (or YHWH ) is Almighty. The Old Testament stresses the special relationship between God and his chosen people , Israel, but includes instructions for proselytes as well. This relationship is expressed in the biblical covenant (contract) between the two, received by Moses . The law codes in books such as Exodus and especially Deuteronomy are
1139-605: The Septuagint (Latin for 'Seventy') from the supposed number of translators involved (hence its abbreviation " LXX "). This Septuagint remains the basis of the Old Testament in the Eastern Orthodox Church . It varies in many places from the Masoretic Text and includes numerous books no longer considered canonical in some traditions: 1 Esdras , Judith , Tobit , the books of Maccabees ,
1206-592: The Summa Theologica of Thomas Aquinas , in the singular case of Jesus, the word Christ has a twofold meaning, which stands for "both the Godhead anointing and the manhood anointed". It derives from the twofold human-divine nature of Christ ( dyophysitism ): the Son of man is anointed in consequence of His incarnated flesh, as well as the Son of God is anointing in consequence of the " Godhead which He has with
1273-728: The Apostolic Age , the use of the definite article before the word Christ and its gradual development into a proper name show the Christians identified the bearer with the promised Messias of the Jews. In the Old Testament , anointing was a ceremonial ritual reserved to: In the Septuagint text of the deuterocanonical books , the term "Christ" (Χριστός, translit. Christós) is found in 2 Maccabees 1:10 (referring to
1340-482: The Babylonian exile ) upon his people. The theme is played out, with many variations, in books as different as the histories of Kings and Chronicles, the prophets like Ezekiel and Jeremiah , and in the wisdom books like Job and Ecclesiastes. The process by which scriptures became canons and Bibles was a long one, and its complexities account for the many different Old Testaments which exist today. Timothy H. Lim,
1407-576: The Book of Wisdom , Sirach , and Baruch . Early modern biblical criticism typically explained these variations as intentional or ignorant corruptions by the Alexandrian scholars, but most recent scholarship holds it is simply based on early source texts differing from those later used by the Masoretes in their work. The Septuagint was originally used by Hellenized Jews whose knowledge of Greek
SECTION 20
#17327649666111474-582: The Catholic canon comprises 46 books; and the most common of the Protestant canons comprises 39 books. There are 39 books common to essentially all Christian canons. They correspond to the 24 books of the Tanakh , with some differences of order, and there are some differences in text. The greater count of books reflects the splitting of several texts ( Samuel , Kings , Chronicles , Ezra–Nehemiah , and
1541-487: The Dead Sea Scrolls . In general, Catholic and Orthodox churches include the deuterocanonical books in the Old Testament. Most Protestant Bibles do not include them in their canon, but some versions of Anglican and Lutheran Bibles place such books in a separate section called Apocrypha . The Old Testament contains 39 (Protestant), 46 (Catholic), or more (Orthodox and other) books, divided, very broadly, into
1608-655: The Greek word χριστός ( chrīstós ), meaning literally " anointed one". The word is derived from the Greek verb χρίω ( chrī́ō ), meaning literally "to anoint." In the Greek Septuagint , χριστός was a semantic loan used to translate the Hebrew מָשִׁיחַ ( Mašíaḥ , messiah), meaning "[one who is] anointed". The word Christ (and similar spellings) appears in English and in most European languages. English speakers now often use "Christ" as if it were
1675-513: The Hellenistic time (332–198 BC), though containing much older material as well; Job was completed by the 6th century BC; Ecclesiastes by the 3rd century BC. Throughout the Old Testament, God is consistently depicted as the one who created the world. Although the God of the Old Testament is not consistently presented as the only god who exists , he is always depicted as the only God whom Israel
1742-750: The Pentateuch (Torah) , the historical books , the "wisdom" books and the prophets. The table below uses the spellings and names present in modern editions of the Christian Bible, such as the Catholic New American Bible Revised Edition and the Protestant Revised Standard Version and English Standard Version . The spelling and names in both the 1609–F10 Douay Old Testament (and in the 1582 Rheims New Testament ) and
1809-682: The Revised Standard Version Catholic Edition ) use the same "standardized" (King James Version) spellings and names as Protestant Bibles (e.g. 1 Chronicles as opposed to the Douaic 1 Paralipomenon, 1–2 Samuel and 1–2 Kings instead of 1–4 Kings) in those books which are universally considered canonical: the protocanonicals . The Talmud (the Jewish commentary on the scriptures) in Bava Batra 14b gives
1876-486: The Samaritan woman at the well at John 4:25. In both cases, the Greek text specifies immediately after that this means "the Christ." Christology, literally "the understanding of Christ", is the study of the nature (person) and work (role in salvation) of Jesus in Christianity . It studies Jesus Christ's humanity and divinity, and the relation between these two aspects; and the role he plays in salvation . From
1943-578: The Temple at that time. The books of Joshua , Judges , Samuel and Kings follow, forming a history of Israel from the Conquest of Canaan to the Siege of Jerusalem c. 587 BC . There is a broad consensus among scholars that these originated as a single work (the so-called " Deuteronomistic History ") during the Babylonian exile of the 6th century BC. The two Books of Chronicles cover much
2010-760: The Torah (the Old Testament Pentateuch) as having authoritative status; by the 2nd century BC, the Prophets had a similar status, although without quite the same level of respect as the Torah; beyond that, the Jewish scriptures were fluid, with different groups seeing authority in different books. Hebrew texts began to be translated into Greek in Alexandria in about 280 BC and continued until about 130 BC. These early Greek translations – supposedly commissioned by Ptolemy II Philadelphus – were called
2077-617: The Twelve Minor Prophets ) into separate books in Christian Bibles. The books that are part of the Christian Old Testament but that are not part of the Hebrew canon are sometimes described as deuterocanonical books . These books are ultimately derived from the earlier Septuagint , the earliest extant Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, and are also Jewish in origin. Some are also contained in
Masih - Misplaced Pages Continue
2144-474: The anointed High Priest of Israel ) and in the Book of Sirach 46:19, in relation to Samuel , prophet and institutor of the kingdom under Saul. At the time of Jesus, there was no single form of Second Temple Judaism , and there were significant political, social, and religious differences among the various Jewish groups. But for centuries the Jews had used the term moshiach ("anointed") to refer to their expected deliverer. Mark 1:1 ("The beginning of
2211-532: The messiah in Judaism . Christians believe that Jesus is the messiah foretold in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament . Although the conceptions of the messiah in each religion are similar, for the most part they are distinct from one another due to the split of early Christianity and Judaism in the 1st century . Although the original followers of Jesus believed Jesus to be
2278-475: The messianic predictions in a fuller and a higher sense than had been given them by the rabbis . The so-called Confession of Peter , recorded in the Synoptic Gospels as Jesus's foremost apostle Peter saying that Jesus was the Messiah, has become a famous proclamation of faith among Christians since the first century. In John 11:27 Martha told Jesus, "you are the Christ, the Son of God, who
2345-651: The 1749 revision by Bishop Challoner (the edition currently in print used by many Catholics, and the source of traditional Catholic spellings in English) and in the Septuagint differ from those spellings and names used in modern editions which are derived from the Hebrew Masoretic Text . For the Orthodox canon, Septuagint titles are provided in parentheses when these differ from those editions. For
2412-705: The Catholic canon, the Douaic titles are provided in parentheses when these differ from those editions. Likewise, the King James Version references some of these books by the traditional spelling when referring to them in the New Testament, such as "Esaias" (for Isaiah ). In the spirit of ecumenism , more recent Catholic translations (e.g. the New American Bible , Jerusalem Bible , and ecumenical translations used by Catholics, such as
2479-520: The Father" (ST III , q. 16, a. 5). The use of "Χ" as an abbreviation for "Christ" derives from the Greek letter Chi (χ), in the word Christós ( ‹See Tfd› Greek: Χριστός ). An early Christogram is the Chi Rho symbol, formed by superimposing the first two Greek letters in Christ, chi (Χ) and rho (Ρ), to produce ☧ . The centuries-old English word Χmas (or, in earlier form, XPmas )
2546-667: The Hebrew, Greek and Latin versions of the Hebrew Bible are the best known Old Testaments, there were others. At much the same time as the Septuagint was being produced, translations were being made into Aramaic, the language of Jews living in Palestine and the Near East and likely the language of Jesus : these are called the Aramaic Targums , from a word meaning "translation", and were used to help Jewish congregations understand their scriptures. For Aramaic Christians, there
2613-465: The Jewish messiah, e.g. in the Confession of Peter , he was usually called "Jesus of Nazareth" or "Jesus, son of Joseph ". Jesus came to be called "Jesus Christ" (meaning "Jesus the Khristós ", i.e. "Jesus the Messiah" or "Jesus the Anointed ") by Christians, who believe that his crucifixion and resurrection fulfill the messianic prophecies of the Old Testament, especially the prophecies outlined in Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22. Christ derives from
2680-405: The Old Testament predicted a Messiah who would suffer and die for the sins of all people. The story of Jesus' death, therefore, involved a profound shift in meaning from the Old Testament tradition. The name "Old Testament" reflects Christianity's understanding of itself as the fulfillment of Jeremiah's prophecy of a New Covenant (which is similar to "testament" and often conflated) to replace
2747-400: The Old Testament. Of the remainder, the books of the various prophets— Isaiah , Jeremiah , Ezekiel , and the twelve " minor prophets "—were written between the 8th and 6th centuries BC, with the exceptions of Jonah and Daniel , which were written much later. The "wisdom" books— Job , Proverbs , Ecclesiastes , Psalms , Song of Songs —have various dates: Proverbs possibly was completed by
Masih - Misplaced Pages Continue
2814-451: The Septuagint ( 3 Ezra and 3 and 4 Maccabees are excluded); the Anglicans after the English Civil War adopted a compromise position, restoring the 39 Articles and keeping the extra books that were excluded by the Westminster Confession of Faith , both for private study and for reading in churches but not for establishing any doctrine, while Lutherans kept them for private study, gathered in an appendix as biblical apocrypha . While
2881-459: The Septuagint's, and Theodotion's. The so-called "fifth" and "sixth editions" were two other Greek translations supposedly miraculously discovered by students outside the towns of Jericho and Nicopolis : these were added to Origen's Octapla. In 331, Constantine I commissioned Eusebius to deliver fifty Bibles for the Church of Constantinople . Athanasius recorded Alexandrian scribes around 340 preparing Bibles for Constans . Little else
2948-451: The Son of God?', to which Jesus reportedly answered: Ὑμεῖς λέγετε ὅτι ἐγώ εἰμι ( Hymeis legete hoti ego eimi , "You [plural] say that I am". In the Gospel of Mark, however, when asked by Caiaphas 'Are you the Messiah, the Son of the Blessed One?', Jesus tells the Sanhedrin: Ἐγώ εἰμι ( ego eimi , "I am"). There are instances from Jewish literature in which the expression "you have said it" is equivalent to "you are right". The Messianic claim
3015-419: The Western Church, specifically as the Sixto-Clementine Vulgate , while the Churches in the East continued, and continue, to use the Septuagint. Jerome, however, in the Vulgate's prologues , describes some portions of books in the Septuagint not found in the Hebrew Bible as being non- canonical (he called them apocrypha ); for Baruch , he mentions by name in his Prologue to Jeremiah and notes that it
3082-407: The books in the Catholic and Orthodox canons that are absent from the Jewish Masoretic Text and most modern Protestant Bibles. Catholics, following the Canon of Trent (1546), describe these books as deuterocanonical, while Greek Orthodox Christians, following the Synod of Jerusalem (1672) , use the traditional name of anagignoskomena , meaning "that which is to be read." They are present in
3149-417: The canon as already closed. In the 16th century, the Protestant reformers sided with Jerome; yet although most Protestant Bibles now have only those books that appear in the Hebrew Bible, the order is that of the Greek Bible. Rome then officially adopted a canon, the Canon of Trent , which is seen as following Augustine's Carthaginian Councils or the Council of Rome , and includes most, but not all, of
3216-417: The canon. However, Jerome (347–420), in his Prologue to Judith , claims that the Book of Judith was "found by the Nicene Council to have been counted among the number of the Sacred Scriptures". In Western Christianity or Christianity in the Western half of the Roman Empire , Latin had displaced Greek as the common language of the early Christians, and in 382 AD Pope Damasus I commissioned Jerome ,
3283-406: The evidence for these words comes from "educated Englishmen who knew their Greek". The December 1957 News and Views published by the Church League of America , a conservative organization founded in 1937, attacked the use of "Xmas" in an article titled "X=The Unknown Quantity". Gerald L. K. Smith picked up the statements later, in December 1966, saying that Xmas was a "blasphemous omission of
3350-414: The gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God") identifies Jesus as both Christ and the Son of God . Matthew 1:1 uses Christ as a name and Matthew 1:16 explains it again with: "Jesus, who is called Christ". The use of the definite article before the word "Christ" and its gradual development into a proper name show that the Christians identified Jesus with the promised messiah of the Jews who fulfilled all
3417-414: The leading scholar of the day, to produce an updated Latin Bible to replace the Vetus Latina , which was a Latin translation of the Septuagint. Jerome's work, called the Vulgate , was a direct translation from Hebrew, since he argued for the superiority of the Hebrew texts in correcting the Septuagint on both philological and theological grounds. His Vulgate Old Testament became the standard Bible used in
SECTION 50
#17327649666113484-499: The name of Christ" and that "'X' is referred to as being symbolical of the unknown quantity." More recently, American evangelist Franklin Graham and former CNN contributor Roland S. Martin publicly raised concerns. Graham stated in an interview that the use of "Xmas" is taking "Christ out of Christmas" and called it a "war against the name of Jesus Christ." Roland Martin relates the use of "Xmas" to his growing concerns of increasing commercialization and secularization of what he says
3551-402: The patriarchs" and "the unified conquest of the land" were widely accepted in the United States until about the 1970s. Contrarily, Grabbe says that those in his field now "are all minimalists – at least, when it comes to the patriarchal period and the settlement. ... [V]ery few are willing to operate [as maximalists]." In 2022, archaeologist Avraham Faust wrote that in the 1990s
3618-419: The poetic and " Wisdom books " dealing, in various forms, with questions of good and evil in the world; and the books of the biblical prophets, warning of the consequences of turning away from God. The books that compose the Old Testament canon and their order and names differ between various branches of Christianity . The canons of the Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox Churches comprise up to 49 books;
3685-413: The same material as the Pentateuch and Deuteronomistic history and probably date from the 4th century BC. Chronicles, and Ezra–Nehemiah , was probably finished during the 3rd century BC. Catholic and Orthodox Old Testaments contain two (Catholic Old Testament) to four (Orthodox) Books of the Maccabees , written in the 2nd and 1st centuries BC. These history books make up around half the total content of
3752-588: The second to the fifth centuries, the relation of the human and divine nature of Christ was a major focus of debates in the early church and at the first seven ecumenical councils . The Council of Chalcedon in 451 issued a formulation of the hypostatic union of the two natures of Christ, one human and one divine, "united with neither confusion nor division". Most of the major branches of Western Christianity and Eastern Orthodoxy subscribe to this formulation, while many branches of Oriental Orthodox Churches reject it, subscribing to miaphysitism . According to
3819-408: The similarity of the Genesis flood narrative and the Gilgamesh flood myth . Similarities between the origin story of Moses and that of Sargon of Akkad were noted by psychoanalyst Otto Rank in 1909 and popularized by 20th-century writers, such as H. G. Wells and Joseph Campbell . Jacob Bronowski writes that, "the Bible is ... part folklore and part record. History is ... written by
3886-437: The spelling Crist —the i being pronounced either as / iː / , preserved in the names of churches such as St Katherine Cree , or as a short / ɪ / , preserved in the modern pronunciation of " Christmas ". The spelling "Christ" in English is attested from the 14th century. In modern and ancient usage, even in secular terminology, "Christ" usually refers to Jesus, based on the centuries-old tradition of such usage. Since
3953-544: The term to refer to a pledge. Further themes in the Old Testament include salvation , redemption , divine judgment , obedience and disobedience, faith and faithfulness, among others. Throughout there is a strong emphasis on ethics and ritual purity , both of which God demands, although some of the prophets and wisdom writers seem to question this, arguing that God demands social justice above purity, and perhaps does not even care about purity at all. The Old Testament's moral code enjoins fairness, intervention on behalf of
4020-442: The terms of the contract: Israel swears faithfulness to God, and God swears to be Israel's special protector and supporter. However, The Jewish Study Bible denies that the word covenant ( brit in Hebrew) means "contract"; in the ancient Near East, a covenant would have been sworn before the gods, who would be its enforcers. As God is part of the agreement, and not merely witnessing it, The Jewish Study Bible instead interprets
4087-435: The time of Jesus, some Jews expected that a flesh-and-blood descendant of David (the " Son of David ") would come to establish a real Jewish kingdom in Jerusalem, instead of the Roman province of Judaea. Others stressed the Son of Man , a distinctly other-worldly figure who would appear as a judge at the end of time . Some expounded a synthesised view of both positions, where a messianic kingdom of this world would last for
SECTION 60
#17327649666114154-429: The victors, and the Israelis , when they burst through [ Jericho ( c. 1400 BC )], became the carriers of history." In 2007, a historian of ancient Judaism Lester L. Grabbe explained that earlier biblical scholars such as Julius Wellhausen (1844–1918) could be described as 'maximalist', accepting biblical text unless it has been disproven. Continuing in this tradition, both "the 'substantial historicity' of
4221-457: The vulnerable, and the duty of those in power to administer justice righteously. It forbids murder, bribery and corruption, deceitful trading, and many sexual misdemeanours . All morality is traced back to God, who is the source of all goodness. The problem of evil plays a large part in the Old Testament. The problem the Old Testament authors faced was that a good God must have had just reason for bringing disaster (meaning notably, but not only,
4288-402: Was a Syriac translation of the Hebrew Bible called the Peshitta , as well as versions in Coptic (the everyday language of Egypt in the first Christian centuries, descended from ancient Egyptian ), Ethiopic (for use in the Ethiopian church , one of the oldest Christian churches), Armenian (Armenia was the first to adopt Christianity as its official religion), and Arabic . Christianity
4355-482: Was better than Hebrew. However, the texts came to be used predominantly by gentile converts to Christianity and by the early Church as its scripture, Greek being the lingua franca of the early Church. The three most acclaimed early interpreters were Aquila of Sinope , Symmachus the Ebionite , and Theodotion ; in his Hexapla , Origen placed his edition of the Hebrew text beside its transcription in Greek letters and four parallel translations: Aquila's, Symmachus's,
4422-400: Was less significant than the claim to divinity, which caused the high priest 's horrified accusation of blasphemy and the subsequent call for the death sentence. Before Pilate , on the other hand, it was merely the assertion of his royal dignity which gave grounds for his condemnation. The word "Christ" is closely associated with Jesus in the Pauline epistles , which suggests that there
4489-469: Was no need for the early Christians to claim that Jesus is Christ because it was considered widely accepted among them. Hence Paul can use the term Khristós with no confusion as to whom it refers, and he can use expressions such as "in Christ" to refer to the followers of Jesus, as in 1 Corinthians 4:15 and Romans 12:5 . Paul proclaimed him as the Last Adam , who restored through obedience what Adam lost through disobedience. The Pauline epistles are
#610389