Why the name, ‘Christians?’
We already know that the Christians and the Nazarenes were two separate groups by the time of the Fourth Century CE. We also know that the Christians eventually came to persecute not only the Nazarenes, but all other sects within Israel.
But why was the name ‘Christian’ chosen? Why Christian, and not some other name? And does this name Christian have any special significance?
A number of passages in the New Covenant tell us that there was more than one theological faction in the first century Body. For example, the Book of Acts tells us that there were the Hebrews and the Hellenists:
1 Now in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplying, there arose a complaint against the Hebrews by the Hellenists, because their widows were neglected in the daily distribution. [Ma’aseh (Acts) 6:1]
In the King James Version, this word ‘Hellenists’ is translated as ‘Grecians’:
1 And in those days, when the number of the disciples was multiplied, there arose a murmuring of the Grecians against the Hebrews, because their widows were neglected in the daily ministration.
[Acts 6:1, King James Version]
The Church tells us that the word Hellenists (or Grecians) is a reference to ethnic Greeks. The reason this cannot be correct is that the Apostles were not allowed to take the Good News to non-Jews until Acts Chapter Ten (four full chapters later). Acts Chapter Six describes only the history of the early Jerusalem Assembly, before the Gentiles were brought in. Therefore, the terms Hebrew and Hellenist must refer to sub-divisions within the early Jewish assembly.
However, if there were Hebrew and Hellenist sub-factions in the early all-Jewish assembly, then who were these Hebrews and Hellenists? Could it be that these terms were just early (or alternate) names for the Nazarenes and the Christians, (respectively)?
The disciples were first called ‘Christians’ at the Jewish synagogue in Antioch (in modern-day Turkey), in Acts Chapter Eleven:
26 And the disciples were first called Christians in Antioch.
[Ma’aseh (Acts) 11:26]
The Church has always taught that this should be taken as a simple statement of fact: that the disciples were legitimately called Christians; and that the terms Christian and Nazarene are therefore synonymous (and can be used interchangeably).
The fatal flaw with this argument is that even the Church Father Epiphanius tells us that the Nazarenes were a separate entity, from the Christians. Further, we never see the Apostles referring to themselves as Christians: only other people call them that. That the Apostles do not correct others for calling them Christians does not make the two terms synonymous: It simply means that there is some hidden drama:
25 But he said, "I am not mad, most noble Festus, but speak the words of truth and reason. 26 For the king, before whom I also speak freely, knows these things; for I am convinced that none of these things escapes his attention, since this thing was not done in a corner.
27 “King Agrippa, do you believe the prophets? I know that you do believe.”
28 Then Agrippa said to Shaul, "You almost persuade me to become a Christian.”
29 And Shaul said, "I would to Elohim that not only you, but also all who hear me today, might become both almost and altogether such as I am (i.e., a Nazarene); except for these chains.”
[Ma’aseh (Acts) 26:25-29]
The Apostle Shaul was in chains, and King Agrippa was almost persuaded to become a Christian. This was hardly the time for Shaul to begin a discourse on the differences between the Nazarenes and the Christians; especially when Shaul understood that the Ephraimites would be gathered into Christianity first:
3 Let no one deceive you by any means; for that Day will not come unless the falling away comes first, and the Man of Sin (i.e., the Pope) is revealed, the son of perdition….
[2nd Thessalonians 2:3]
By the time Shaul wrote Second Thessalonians, he understood that the Body of Messiah was going to have to fall away from the Torah for some time. For two prophetic days (i.e., two thousand years), the Ephraimites would be brought into the temporary vehicle called Christianity, rather than becoming fully-fledged Nazarenes. Since that was the case, it would have made very little sense for Shaul to stand there and insist that King Agrippa consider becoming a Nazarene. That he was in the process of becoming a Christian was enough.
Kefa (or Peter) also apparently understood that the dispersed Ephraimites would have to be brought back into Christianity first, before they could be brought the rest of the way back to the original Nazarene faith. Although he addresses his first epistle to the Dispersed (i.e., Ephraim), Kefa then writes:
16 Yet if anyone suffers as a Christian, let him not be ashamed, but let him glorify Elohim in this matter.
[Kefa Aleph (1st Peter) 4:14-16]
Kefa understood that the Dispersed of Ephraim would first become Christians before their descendants ultimately became Nazarenes. However, even so, he did not refer to himself as a Christian: He only told the Ephraimites that if they suffered for believing on the Messiah, that it would not be a shame to them.
But this is curious. Why should the Apostles not refer to themselves as Christians, when Christianity was to be the up-and-coming thing? If Ephraim was to be swallowed-up in the Church, then why did the Nazarenes continue to cling tenaciously to the ‘Jewish observances’ until the Christians exterminated them?
Westerners typically have difficulty relating to eastern concepts. This is tragic, for the Israelite faith is actually somewhat more of an eastern than a western religion, just as the Land of Israel lies in the Middle-East (and not in the Mid-West).
Westerners tend to see the West as the center of everything, at least insofar as the vast majority of industrial and technological advancement has been made in the Protestant West for the last several hundred years. For this reason, when Middle-Eastern concepts come to western ears, westerners have a tendency to discard them as either being irrelevant, unimportant, or strange. This is a mistake.
The world was created when YHWH spoke:
6 Then Elohim said, "Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters.”
7 Thus Elohim made the firmament (by speaking), and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament; and it was so.
[Breisheet (Genesis) 1:6-7]
Not only was the world created when YHWH spoke, but it was put into specific form. From this we can see that even the sounds of Words are important. Modern physicists are only now beginning to understand these concepts by application of String Theory, and a principle known as Spiritually Bounded Harmonics. These concepts will be explored more fully in ‘Nazarene Scripture Commentary, but for the moment, let us consider computer programs.
Just exactly as a computer programmer uses specific commands in a specific programming language to cause a computer to do certain things, YHWH applied specific Hebrew Words to the material realm, in order to cause it to do certain things. In a sense, then, YHWH uses Hebrew as His programming language.
Programming languages require one to be quite precise. If one takes a specific command from one of the more elegant (higher-level) computer languages (such as Cobol, or C++) and tries to use them in a program written in the foundational Machine Language (or even Unix), the commands will not be recognized.
In much the same way, while the term Christian may be considered a legitimate reference to a believer in the Jewish Messiah in Greek, the term is meaningless in Hebrew. It translates to literally nothing; which, in the Hebrew mind, is a good reason not to call one’s self a Christian.
However, far more importantly, Israel’s children were always commanded to avoid worshipping, or even speaking the names of foreign elohim (gods):
13 "Now concerning everything which I have said to you, be on your guard! Do not mention the names of other elohim. Do not (even) let them be heard from your mouth!
[Shemot (Exodus) 23:13]
While Israelites were forbidden to worship other elohim, it was common practice for the Greeks, the Romans and/or the Babylonians to adopt foreign elohim into their pantheons. One of the foreign gods that had been adopted into the Greek and Roman pantheons, then, was the Hindu god of war, Krishna.
In Hindu religious literature, Krishna is a human incarnation of their god (Vishnu). On the eve of battle, Krishna tells a young man (Arjuna) not to be reluctant about killing his brothers and family, but to do his duty as a warrior, and to kill them without regret.
Any scholar can tell you that the reason the Greeks called Yeshua Christ instead of Messiah is that the term ‘Christ’ is allegedly the Greek equivalent of the Hebrew term ‘Messiah.’ Since Krishna was also supposed to be a physical incarnation of a supreme deity (Vishnu), scholars suggest that the terms Messiah and Christ are equivalents.
However, in a world where words and their sounds have specific meaning, and in a world where the worship of foreign elohim (gods) is prohibited, it should not be too difficult to see that there is a difficulty with calling the Hebrew Messiah the Christ (i.e., Krishna).
However well one might intend it, at least in terms of spiritually bounded harmonics, to call Yeshua the Christ is to equate Him with Krishna, the Hindu war god who encouraged young men to do their sacred duty, and to kill their brothers and family members in war, without regret. It should also not be impossible to draw spiritual parallels to the Christians, who did what they felt was their sacred duty, and killed their Jewish brothers and sisters (and others of the Israelite family) without regret.
The Christian soldiers marched onward to war in persecutions, pogroms, Inquisitions and Crusades. The death toll among the Jews (and the Nazarenes, both Jewish and Ephraimite) ultimately reached into the millions.