Christ Jesus vs Jesus Christ in RNWT

by wisdomfrombelow 21 Replies latest watchtower bible

  • MeanMrMustard
    MeanMrMustard

    @wisdomfrombelow:

    I only find one place... Titus 2:13.

    MMM

  • Doug Mason
    Doug Mason

    Let us go into the 1st century.

    Paul and Jerusalem were operating independently, often adversarily. It is Paul who made much of Jesus as "Christ", using the title as if it were a name. It is Paul who turned Jesus (Yeshua, actually) into a Christian. Remove the writings and the influence of Pauline thought - including Gospels - and little is left of the NT (consider the position held by Marcion).

    The people who wrote Timothy and Titus were followers of Paul, so they wrote in a manner that they believed reflected his position. These were written decades after Paul's death.

    That's what happens when you climb into the first century.

    Doug

  • Bobcat
    Bobcat

    It appears that the revised NWT was updated with newer greek texts. The WH text reads "Christ Jesus." The UBS3 text has "Jesus Christ."

    See here for how others render it.

    And here is a comparison of various Greek texts.

    It doesn't appear to be theologically important.

  • Terry
    Terry

    Let us go into the 1st century.

    Paul and Jerusalem were operating independently, often adversarily. It is Paul who made much of Jesus as "Christ", using the title as if it were a name. It is Paul who turned Jesus (Yeshua, actually) into a Christian. Remove the writings and the influence of Pauline thought - including Gospels - and little is left of the NT (consider the position held by Marcion).

    The people who wrote Timothy and Titus were followers of Paul, so they wrote in a manner that they believed reflected his position. These were written decades after Paul's death.

    That's what happens when you climb into the first century.

    Yes, we've come to regard the New Testament as ONE STORY from different POV's.

    Wrong.

    It is many contradictory stories from different POV's.

    One man's Jesus is not the other man's messiah or Christ.

    The number one knock-down and drag-out battle between "christians" was WHO Jesus actually was.

    They could not agree even on that one thing.

    These people were in battle, physically, and inimical to one another on basic-basics.

    We can't come along two THOUSAND years past all that and waltz through these stories immune to the ravages of accretion.

  • MeanMrMustard
    MeanMrMustard

    There were a couple extra patterns I didn't search.. These are the scriptures I see that have a switch between Jesus and Christ.

    Romans 1 1
    2 Corinthians 1 19
    Philippians 1 6
    Philippians 2 21
    Titus 2 13

    MMM

  • thomasaquinas
    thomasaquinas

    Ditto on Blondie's comment.

  • Bobcat
    Bobcat

    MMM:

    Regarding Rom 1:1; 2 Cor 1:19; Php 1:6; 2:21. In each case the UBS3 greek text has the order used in the Revised NWT. And in each case, the old NWT uses the order used in the WH greek text.

    I can't see were it would be (to manuscript copyists) anything other than a stylistic difference. Any meaning the WT may have attatched to the order is suddenly reversed merely by the use of a different greek text which may have been built upon a different family of greek manuscripts. Or it may have been nothing more than a compilers choice between two different options.

    I can't think of any scriptural reference that would definitively give meaning to the order. The Insight reference above posits a stylistic motif when more than one title is applied to Jesus. The rest (whether "Christ" is before or after "Jesus") appears to be a conjectural analysis at best. It would be curious to see if a definitive list of all the occurrances and their contexts revealed some pattern of use. But I don't think it does.

    Having said that, here is an observation, and here is a Catholic article. And here is a searchable list. Part of the problem is that as time passes by, the title/name combination becomes a name in itself, somewhat like acronyms (such as "ASAP") become words themselves.

    Take Care

  • jamclark
    jamclark

    Good call Blondie.

    Indeed, it would be Jesus the Christ (Greek) as he was the anointed, similarly it would be Yahusha haMashiach (Hebrew). So Christ Jesus would be similar to him being The anointed, named Jesus. Also similar to King James, or James the King (of England).

  • whatzup
    whatzup

    My dear friends here is the reason why the GB puts sometimes Jesus Christ or Christ Jesus. Who is the mediator for the anointed ones? Jesus Christ or Christ Jesus? Read 1 Tim 2:5. Notice that the word Christ in this verse comes before Jesus. Once I read in a Watchtower magazine about the reason why it was this way. Since the word Christ means "anointed", that would mean that Jesus was the mediator between the 144k and JHWH. I can't remember exactly what Watchtower was explaining it this way.

  • Pistoff
    Pistoff

    The idea that the writers of the WT would be able to consider the theological meaning and textual context of Jesus Christ is laughable.

    Their versions and revisions are all motivated by a desire to be different, to support old doctrine, and in the case of the newest version, to generate buzz? To distract from the 100 year anniversary of 1914?

    And the idea mentioned above by Terry and Doug, that there were many competing ideas at the time about Jesus, a revolutionary jewish sage, is completely unacceptable to them; they take the text as is, with no regard to why other versions, with even more mythology, were discarded by those who assembled the canon hundreds of years later.

    I am thinking of The Cross that Spoke, a book by John Dominic Crossan, as a great example, but there are others of the Gnostic Gospels that sound fantastic to us, primarily because we are used to the mythology contained in the gospels.

    No mention of any of those.

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