False Christs or False Christians?

[seanD]

IMO, the passage is a warning against false claimants to Messiahship. If that is correct, it would fit right in with the very strong emphasis in Saint Matthew’s Gospel upon the Davidic Kingship and Messiahship of Jesus. Just my guess. Might He be thinking of the events of the Jewish War against Rome ?

Why do you think it would have been necessary for Jesus to warn them about false christs if they were still alive up to and around 70 AD? Do you think they would have forgotten what he looked like? And who were the "many" that were deceived by this?

[One Bad Pig]

It's hard to tell if you were lying or just an idiot here. The word translated Christian in Acts 11:26 is "Christianous", which is Greek, not hybridized Greek and Latin like you gave.

Suffix
-ιανός • (-ianós) m
Added to nouns (chiefly neuter) to give a diminutive form, expressing small size or affection.
Χριστός (Christós) + -ιανός (-ianós) → χριστιανός m (christianós, “Christian”)
Χριστός (Christós) + -ιανός (-ianós) → χριστιανή f (christianí, “Christian”)

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-ιανός

It was a derogatory term by the pagans calling followers of Christ "little Christs" the same way a liberal might call a conservative a "little Hitler". But what began as mockery became a badge of honor, since:

Scripture Verse: 2 Corinthians 3

18 And we all, who with unveiled faces contemplate the Lord's glory, are being transformed into his image with ever-increasing glory, which comes from the Lord, who is the Spirit.

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and:

Scripture Verse: 2 Chronicles 7

14 If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land.

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If you're going to bother correcting me, at least 1) be accurate in your correction and 2) make the effort to find a decent source; wiktionary is a massive fail. I'm begining to realize there's nothing much there behind your bluster; perhaps that's why you're so pointedly antagonistic, hoping that people won't notice.

It turns out that Christianos is a hybridized Greek/Latin word:

Source: Heresy and Identity in Late Antiquity, p. 214-217

The author of the Acts of the Apostles informs us that "It was at Antioch that the disciples were first called Christians (Christianoi)" (Acts 11:26). However, despite its apparently eastern provenance, scholars have frequently noted that the word is not Greek in form, but Latinate; the Greek Christianos/Christianoi seems to be transliterated from the Latin Christianus/Christiani. As Elias Bickerman has explained:

[The word] is formed by the addition of a Latin loan suffix -ianus. In Latin this suffix produced proper names of the type Marcianus and, on the other hand, derivatives from the name of a person, which referred to his belongings, like fundus Narcissianus, or, by extension, to his adherents, Ciceroniani.

Many scholars have sought parallels and patterns that might explain the Latinate "-ianus" ending. Erik Peterson has suggested that it was coined by outsiders on the model of Herodiani. Bickerman conjectured that the Jesus-followers themselves formed the name after Latinate models they had heard, to express the Semitic idea that they were agents of the anointed king; and further that the reason that the term is found so rarely among very early "Christian" writings is that it was a title directed towards the outside world; among themselves, the believers preferred to address each other as adelphoi, hagioi,, etc. Baruch Lifshitz also argued that the name originated within the community itself, when the mission of Barnabas and Paul in Antioch changed the character of the group by including many Gentile converts; the believers at Atioch then found the need to distinguish themselves from the Jews whose law they did not follow, and they chose their distinctive messianism after which to name themselves.
Justin Taylor, on the other hand, has argued that the original Christiani were messianic Jews, marked out for punishment by the Roman authorities for causing riots in Antioch. Harold Mattingly has constructed a specific model for the development of the term, claiming that a hostile pagan population mockingly named the Christiani after Nero's claque of Augustiani. Christiani, he argues, was the name for those who sycophantically sang the praises of "Christos" rather than Nero.
How are we to navigate all these differing interpretations of the evidence? The argument of scholars including Taylor and Peterson that the Latin Christiani was originally coined by the Roman authorities in the Greek-speaking provinces certainly has much to recommend it. Not only is it consinant with the narrative in Acts; it also helps to explain why a Latin term should have entered into Greek Christian discourse and eventually have achieved unrivalled popularity, while no comparable Greek name is attested, as well as the particular association of this name with criminality in the eyes of the government.
I suggest however that there is a way of further explaining the precise formulation of the term and the specific circumstances of its development, which have traditionally proved so puzzling. In two of his epistles, Paul uses the term hoi tou christou (lit. "those of the Christ") to describe the people to whom he is writing. In 1 Cor. 15:23, he describes the resurrection from the dead of hoi tou christou; in Gal. 5:24 he tells his readers that, as hoi tou christou, they have crucified the flesh. And an interesting parallel occurs at the beginning of 1 Corinthians, where he ubraids his readers for their quarreling: "I mean this, that one of you says, 'I am of Paul,' anogher, 'I am of Apollos,]' another, 'I am of Cephas,' another, "I am of Christ'" (1 Cor. 1:12). Paul had explicitly encouraged his assemblies, then, to think of themselves as hoi tou christou; and the formulation was obviously popular enough, at least among the factions Corinthians, to spawn variants, as members of the assembly there pledged rival allegiances. As Bickerman has remarked, Paul's phrase hoi tou christou has similar connotations of dependence or possesseion to the Latinate Christianoi. Bickerman simply notes this as further evidence for his thesis that the Jesus followers in Antioch named themselves Christianoi to announce to the outside world that "they were agents, representatives of the Messiah." However, the implications of the difference in formulation are worth exploring further.
What would the formulation hoi tou christou have suggested to outsiders who heard it? This kind of genitive construction in Greek denotes the relation of child to parent, wife to husband or inferior to superior; it implies some relationship of kinship, adherence or dependence. Paul uses a similar formulation just before the passage quoted above to refer to "Chloe's peole" (hoi Chloes): presumably her slaves or the members of her household. Its usage in the following sentence is slightly different, apparently denoting adherents or followers of different spiritual leaders, Christ and Paul included. The curious but uninitiated observer - especially one with an eye out for sedition - would quite reasonably perceive people who decriged themselves as hoi tou christou to be partisans of this Christos. And in relaying this information back to the Roman authorities, how would he render their self-descriptive phrase (literally untranslatable into Latin, due to the lack of a definite article)? It is likely that he would use an ending that conveyed the same connotations of slavery, dependence or adherence as the Greek genitive construction. He would call them Christiani.
I suggest, then, that the Latin term Christiani was neither entirely generated from within the community nor simply imposed from the outside. Rather, it was coined by the Roman authorities as a Latin translation of these people's own Greek self-description. In the course of time, these people re-appropriated the name by which they had become known to others, as a crystallization of their own self-descriptive phrase.

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