A common
assumption among people is that Christ was the last name of Jesus.
There is good reason for this assumption, since he was called
Jesus Christ in the New Testament itself.
The more accurate phrase, however, is Jesus the Christ, because
Christ is a title and not a name.
The name Jesus
is a succession of transliterations (i.e., simply converting the letters
of one language into the equivalent letters of another language):
English from Latin from Greek from Hebrew (see Matthew 1:21 and Luke
1:31 for the name).
Christ, on the
other hand, is a transliteration of the Greek word christos into
English. The Greek word
christos, a form of the Greek verb chrio that means "to pour,"
is a translation of the Hebrew word mashiach, from which we get the word
"Messiah." Both
words, Christ and Messiah, mean "anointed" (i.e., the
anointing oil was poured onto their heads).
Thus, Jesus
the Christ means Jesus the Anointed.
In the history of the Hebrew people (Jesus was a Jew), those who
were anointed included priests and kings.
This raises some questions: Why was Jesus anointed?
When was he anointed? Who
anointed him? Who else was
anointed in the history of the Hebrew people?
Who did the anointing? How
was anointing done? For a
description of the origin of the process, read Chapters 28 and 29 of
Exodus.
And, this
brings us to the question of this article, "Who was the first
Christ of the Bible?" The
first Christ of the Bible was Aaron, the brother of Moses, who was
anointed as a priest (Exodus 29:7).
Another Christ (a priest) appears in Leviticus 4:5.
The first king to be anointed was Saul (I Samuel 9:16).
Thus, Aaron the Christ was the first priest to be so anointed,
and Saul the Christ was the first king to be so anointed.
Perhaps the most interesting of the Christs is the
one mentioned in Isaiah 45:1. This
was Cyrus the Christ, King of the Persians!
Interesting. Check it
out. |