Archaeology of 'Chrest'

Content: Introduction Catalogue of Chrest archaeology Jesus Christ makes his appearance Indian symbolism and the ‘nomina sacra’ The Isu Chrestos of Marcion Manichaeism

Introduction

There are a number of archaeological references to ‘Chrest’ and ‘Chrestiani’ in the first century, which we note here and, as noted in our article Acts of the Chresmologoi: the Role of Oracles and Chronicles in the Creation of Divine Men, the terms ‘Christ’ and ‘Christian’ in the New Testament derive most probably from the Greek ‘Chrest’.

Those making claims have a duty to support them with reliable evidence and cogent argument, in which greater weight is given to reliable data and primary sources. As no such data has ever been available to support the tradition of a first-century Jesus Christ, the burden of proof for historicity has fallen on texts. Examination of the earliest texts shows a history quite different to that of tradition.

An earlier attempt (by the author, below) at interpreting the use of Chrest, whilst good, makes the basic error of assuming that there is evidence for a (Jesus-centred) Nazarene cult in the first decades of the first century of the modern era:

All this is evidence that the terms Christ and Christians, spelt originally Chrest and Chrestians [chrestianoi]  were directly borrowed from the Temple terminology of the Pagans, and meant the same thing. The God of the Jews was now substituted for the Oracle and the other gods; the generic designation “Chrestos” became a noun applied to one special personage; and new terms such as Chrestianoi and Chrestodoulos “a follower or servant of Chrestos” — were coined out of the old material. This is shown by Philo Judaeus, a monotheist, assuredly, using already the same term for monotheistic purposes. For he speaks of theochrestos “God-declared,” or one who is declared by god, and of logia theochresta “sayings delivered by God” — which proves that he wrote at a time (between the first century B. C., and the first A. D.) when neither Christians nor Chrestians were yet known under these names, but still called themselves the Nazarenes. The notable difference between the two words [chrao] — “consulting or obtaining response from a god or oracle” (chreo being the Ionic earlier form of it), and chrio “to rub, to anoint” (from which the name Christos), has not prevented the ecclesiastical adoption and coinage from Philo’s expression [Theochrestos] of that other term [Theochristos] “anointed by God.” Thus the quiet substitution of the letter, [i] for [e] for dogmatic purposes, was achieved in the easiest way, as we now see.
- The Esoteric Character of the Gospels, Studies in Occultism by H. P. Blavatsky, Theosophical University Press Online Edition

Various apologist arguments are made to try and explain away the growing realisation that there is no Christ in the first century, but rather ‘Chrest’. However, these fail to address:

1. The common usage of the word ‘Chrest’ in the first centuries of this era are most-often associated with theurgy, the practise of Greek low magic, as we see here with the ‘Chrest Magus’ bowl and the ‘Jesus Chrest’ spell.
2. The Christian Church tried to obliterate Chrest, changing the biblical texts to read ‘Christ’. This has not been noticed until very recently.

The association of Chrest and Chrestians with magic is in accord with the our interpretation of much Christian liturgy and ritual as magical in character.

Catalogue of Chrest archaeology

Content: Introduction Catalogue of Chrest archaeology Jesus Christ makes his appearance Indian symbolism and the ‘nomina sacra’

Jesus Christ makes his appearance

The archaeology used commonly to claim the earliest appearances of Jesus Christ and Christianity in the record is shown here to be false: they are ‘interpolations’ and misreadings of panhellenistic symbols.

Christianity first appears unequivocally in the early fourth century and we have found not a single artefact, including text, bearing the term Christ and dated reliably before the fourth century.

What then, of Chrest and Chrestians – what happened to them? They were the subject of prosecution, because their commercial, low magic (theurgy) was illegal and under the emperor Diocletian, reached a high point, recorded by a member of the imperial court, Lactantius.

Lucius Caecilius Firmianus Lactantius (ca. 240 – ca. 320), a Latin-speaking native of North Africa, was an advisor to Roman emperor Constantine I, guiding his religious policy as it developed, and tutor to his son. In his early life, he taught rhetoric in his native place, which may have been Cirta in Numidia, where an inscription mentions a certain ‘L. Caecilius Firmianus’.

At the request of Diocletian, he became an official professor of rhetoric in Nicomedia, the voyage from Africa described in his poem Hodoeporicum. There he associated in the imperial circle with the administrator and polemicist Sossianus Hierocles and the philosopher Porphyry; here he will first have met Constantine and Galerius.

LACTANTIUS.

[TRANSLATED BY THE REV. WILLIAM FLETCHER, D.D.]

CHAP. VII.—OF THE NAME OF SON, AND WHENCE HE IS CALLED JESUS AND CHRIST.

…But although His name, which the supreme Father gave Him from the beginning, is known to none but Himself, nevertheless He has one name among the angels, and another among men, since He is called Jesus among men: for Christ is not a proper name, but a title of power and dominion; for by this the Jews were accustomed to call their kings. But the meaning of this name must be set forth, on account of the error of the ignorant, who by the change of a letter are accustomed to call Him Chrestus.

Editorial note: Suetonius speaks of Christ as Chrestus. The Christians also were called Chrestians, as Tertullian shows in his Apology.

Here we have an open admission to how Chrest becomes Christ. After this point in time, Chrest is Christ, Chrestians are Christians and monks began the process we noted, supra, of changing the biblical texts accordingly.

It also remained to claim panhellenic symbols used in Chrestian texts as ‘nomina sacra’ for Christianity.

Content: Introduction Catalogue of Chrest archaeology Jesus Christ makes his appearance Indian symbolism and the ‘nomina sacra’

Indian symbolism and the “nomina sacra”

The panhellenic world included Greco-India, home to the Indus Valley Civilisation Bronze Age civilization (3300–1300 BCE; mature period 2600–1900 BCE). The first of its cities to be unearthed was the one at Harappa, excavated in the 1920s.

Hundreds of distinct Indus symbols have been found on seals, small tablets, or ceramic pots and over a dozen other materials, including a “signboard” that apparently once hung over the gate of the inner citadel of the Indus city of Dholavira.

Dholavira is one of the largest and most prominent archaeological sites in India, belonging to the Indus Valley Civilization, located on the Khadir bet island in the Kutch Desert Wildlife Sanctuary, Great Rann of Kutch, Kachchh district of Gujarat, India. The site was occupied from c.2650 BCE, declining slowly after about 2100 BCE. It was briefly abandoned and reoccupied until c.1450 BCE. The site was discovered in 1967-8 by J.P. Joshi and is the fifth largest Harappan site in the Indian subcontinent, and has been under excavation almost continuously since 1990 by the Archaeological Survey of India. Eight large urban centers have been discovered: Harappa, Mohenjo Daro, Ganeriwala, Rakhigarhi, Kalibangan, Rupar, Dholavira, and Lothal.

A huge circular structure, believed to be grave or memorial was found and no skeleton or human remains were found under structure. The circular structure has ten radial walls of mud bricks in a shape of spoked wheel.

The ‘Ten Indus Scripts’ discovered near the northen gateway of the citadel, Dholavira.
This city was one of the largest and most prominent archaeological sites in India, belonging to the Indus Valley Civilization.

One of the most significant discoveries at Dholavira was made in one of the side rooms of the northern gateway of the city. The Harappans had arranged and set pieces of the mineral gypsum to form ten large letters on a big wooden board. At some point, the board fell flat on its face. The wood decayed, but the arrangement of the letters survived. The letters of the signboard are comparable to large bricks that were used in nearby wall. Each sign is about 37 cm high and the board on which letters were inscribed was about 3 meter long.

Left: Indus tablets. The first one shows a Swastika.

Around 1800 BCE, signs of a gradual decline began to emerge, and by around 1700 BCE, most of the cities were abandoned. Today, many scholars believe that the collapse of the Indus Civilization was caused by drought and a decline in trade with Egypt and Mesopotamia.

A number of the Indus Valley Civilisation symbols become important Buddhist icons from the 4th century BCE, the time of Macedonian conquest of Persia and foundation of Greco-India with numerous Alexandrian cities.

Anthropomorphic symbolism appeared from around the 1st century CE with the arts of Mathura and the Greco-Buddhist art of Gandhara, and were combined with the previous symbols.

The two main centers of creation have been identified as Gandhara in today’s North West Frontier Province, in Pakistan, and the region of Mathura, in central northern India.

Coin from Ruhana, a region of southern Sri Lanka and which was the centre of a flourishing civilization founded around the year 200 BCE. This region played an important role in in the establishment of Buddhist cultur

The art of Gandhara benefited from centuries of interaction with Greek culture since the conquests of Alexander the Great in 332 BCE and the subsequent establishment of the Greco-Bactrian and Indo-Greek Kingdoms, leading to the development of Greco-Buddhist art. Gandharan Buddhist sculpture displays Greek artistic influence, and it has been suggested that the concept of the “man-god” was essentially inspired by Greek mythological culture. Artistically, the Gandharan school of sculpture is said to have contributed wavy hair, drapery covering both shoulders, shoes and sandals, acanthus leaf decorations, etc.

Left: Footprint of the Buddha. 1st century, Gandhara, with depictions of the triratna and the Dharmacakra.

The Buddha refers to himself as ‘the kinsman of the Sun’ (ie. that he is a descendant of the Solar Dynasty Kshatriya Caste) in the Atanatiya Sutta, Upakkilesa Sutta, Phena Sutta and several other Suttas.

In Helios Rising, we illustrated the similarity between the birth accounts of Buddha and Dionysus, and how they – and various other ‘divine men’ in Classical Antiquity were Helios.

Aspects of this story may have been borrowed from Hindu texts, such as the account of the birth of Indra from the Rig Veda. The story may also have Hellenic influences. For a time after Alexander the Great conquered central Asia in 334 BCE, there was considerable intermingling of Buddhism with Hellenic art and ideas. There also is speculation that the story of the Buddha’s birth was “improved” after Buddhist traders returned from the Middle East with stories of the birth of Jesus.

- The Birth of the Buddha, Legend and Myth by Barbara O’Brien

Right: The Dharmacakra symbol is represented as a chariot wheel (Sanskrit cakram) with eight or more spokes. It is one of the oldest known Buddhist symbols found in Indian art, appearing with the first surviving post-Harappan Indian iconography in the time of the Buddhist king A?oka, who is identified by Dr Ranajit Pal as Diodotus I, the Seleucid satrap of Bactria who rebelled against Seleucid rule.

In Buddhism—according to the Pali Canon, Vinayapitaka, Khandhaka, Mahavagga, Dhammacakkappavattanasutta—number of spokes of the Dharmacakra represent various meanings:

- 8 spokes representing the Noble Eightfold Path.
- 12 spokes representing the Twelve Laws of Dependent Origination.
- 24 spokes representing the Twelve Laws of Dependent Origination and the Twelve Laws of Dependent Termination.
- 31 spokes representing 31 realms of existence.

Diodotus I Soter (c. 285 BCE – c. 239 BCE) wrested independence for his territory, recorded by Trogus, Prol. 41 and Justin xli. 4, 5, where he is called Theodotus; Strabo xi. 515.

Diodotus, the governor of the thousand cities of Bactria (Latin: “Theodotus, mille urbium Bactrianarum praefectus”), defected and proclaimed himself king; all the other people of the Orient followed his example and seceded from the Macedonians. (Justin, XLI,4)

Left: Coin of Agathocles, with the effigy of Diodotus, the Greek inscription reads: “(of) Diodotus the Saviour”.

Sea trade between Greek Egypt and Bactria developed. When Seleucus II in 239 BCE attempted to subjugate the rebels in the east, it appears he and Diodotus united together against the Parthians (Justin xli. 4, 9).

Some of the important Indus symbols also appear in the West.

With the Silk Road transmission of Buddhism, the Buddhist swastika spread to Tibet, China and further afield.

In Greco-Roman art and architecture, and in Romanesque and Gothic art in the West, the swastika is more commonly found as a repeated element in a border or tessellation. The swastika often represented perpetual motion, reflecting the design of a rotating windmill or watermill. A meander of connected swastikas makes up the large band that surrounds the Augustan Ara Pacis. A design of interlocking swastikas is one of several tessellations on the floor of the cathedral of Amiens, France. A border of linked swastikas was a common Roman architectural motif, and can be seen in more recent buildings as a neoclassical element. A swastika border is one form of meander, and the individual swastikas in such a border are sometimes called Greek keys.

The Sun was in the zodiac sign of Pisces, the fish, on the Vernal Equinox, at the start of the modern era. An ancient adaptation of ichthys (the ancient and classical Greek word for “fish”) is a wheel which contains the Greek letters superimposed such that the result resembles an eight-spoked wheel:

Sign carved into marble in the ruins of Ephesus, Turkey

The fish as a symbol possibly represented several goddesses, associated with Aphrodite, Atargatis, Dagon, Ephesus, Isis, Delphine and Pelagia. Barbara Walker, in her book The Woman’s Dictionary of Symbols and Sacred Objects, suggests that Ichthys was the son of the sea goddess Atargatis and that his symbol was a representation of sexuality and fertility.

The symbolism of fish was already important in Judaism’s Tanakh:

16 “But now I will send for many fishermen,” declares the LORD, “and they will catch them. After that I will send for many hunters, and they will hunt them down on every mountain and hill and from the crevices of the rocks. 17 My eyes are on all their ways; they are not hidden from me, nor is their sin concealed from my eyes. 18 I will repay them double for their wickedness and their sin, because they have defiled my land with the lifeless forms of their vile images and have filled my inheritance with their detestable idols.
- Jeremiah 16

The ichthys is seen in first-century catacombs in Rome, which can be associated with Chrest and Chrestians such as Priscilla and Pudens.

 Chi Rho symbol, detail from a mensa (altar stone).
Limestone, third quarter of the 4th century. From Khirbet Um El’Amad, Algeria.

The Chi-Rho symbol was also used by pagan Greek scribes to mark, in the margin, a particularly valuable or relevant passage; the combined letters Chi and Rho standing for chreston.

Some coins of Ptolemy III Euergetes (reigned 246–222 BCE) were marked with a Chi-Rho.

 Ptolemy III Euergetes Æ Drachm, Alexandreia mint.
Diademed head of Zeus-Ammon right
Eagle standing left on winged thunderbolt; filleted cornucopia to left, chi-rho monogram between legs.

Of Plato’s image in Timaeus, Justin Martyr, the Christian apologist writing in the second century, found a prefiguration of the Cross, and an early testimony may be the phrase in Didache, “sign of extension in heaven”.

Hugo Rahner summarized the significance:

The two great circles of the heavens, the equator and the ecliptic, which, by intersecting each other form a sort of recumbent chi and about which the whole dome of the starry heavens swings in a wondrous rhythm, became for the Christian eye a heavenly cross. (Rahner, Greek Myths and Christian Mystery, tr. B. Battershaw (New York) 1963:49f, noticed in Grigg 1977:477 and note 59.)

Right: Graffiti with the chi rho symbol inserted in the word “Beryllos”, found in the Villa of Poppaea Sabina, at Oplontis, outside Naples. The graffito reads: “Berillus, take care!”

“Beryllos” is the name of Nero’s secretary and we have described how Epaphroditus – mentioned in Philippians 2:25 and 4:18 as a a fellow Christian missionary of St. Paul – was probably executed by the emperor Domitian for his role in the death of Nero.

Josephus – whose writings become the historical framework for much of the New Testament – relates how he was befriended by Poppaea Sabina during his stay in Rome and we describe this as the time he became an agent for Rome, as had the Saul who becomes Paul of Tarsus and whose archive became the basis for some of the Pauline canon.

According to Lactantius, a Latin historian of North African origins saved from poverty by the patronage of Constantine I as tutor to his son Crispus, Constantine had dreamt of being ordered to put a “heavenly divine symbol” (Latin: coeleste signum dei) on the shields of his soldiers. The description of the actual symbol chosen by Constantine the next morning, as reported by Lactantius, is not very clear: it closely resembles a Chi Rho or a staurogram. That day, Constantine’s army fought the forces of Maxentius and won the Battle of the Milvian Bridge (312), outside Rome.

Left: Constantine’s labarum, a standard incorporating the wreathed Chi-Rho, from an antique silver medal.

Writing in Greek, Eusebius of Caesarea (died in 339), the bishop who wrote the first surviving general history of the early Christian churches, gave two different accounts of the events. In his church history, written shortly after the battle, when Eusebius didn’t yet have any contact with Constantine, he doesn’t mention any dream or vision, but compares the defeat of Maxentius to that of the biblical pharaoh and credits Constantine’s victory to divine protection.

The archaeology of these ancient symbols, beginning in ancient India, then adopted and adapted in Greco-India, become panhellenic, to appear in Chrestian usage and codices such as Vaticanus and Sinaiticus. Christians then adopt them and change them to read ‘Christ’.

Shepherd of Hermas, 6:8  library: BL  folio: 342  scribe: B2 – original here.

The Christos/Chrestos issue is so sensitive that even the symbol for Christos/Chrestos are edited out in favour of the symbol for “Lord”.

For the Lord swears concerning His Son, that those who denied their Lord [Christ/Chrest] should be rejected from their life, even they that are now about to deny Him in the coming days;

The Isu Chrestos of Marcion

Marcion of Pontus (flourished 2nd century ce). He affirmed Jesus to be the saviour/soter sent by the Heavenly Father, and Paul as His chief apostle. Marcion travelled to Rome ca. 142/143 and during the following years, developed his theological system and subsequently attracted a large following.

The ubiquity of Marcionite communities in Syria and Palestine may be inferred from the warning of Cyril of Jerusalem that the faithful must be careful not to step into a Marcionite church by mistake.

Isu Chrestos

Even more important than the fact that Marcion’s Bible was very short are the number of radical political differences between Marcion’s Bible and our modern day Bible. Firstly the hero of Marcion’s Bible was called Isu Chrestos – not Jesus. An important point here is you don’t see “Jesus Christ” in second century texts. So in the Bible of Marcion of Sinope “Isu Chrestos” appears instead of “Christ” and “Jesus”. Also in the archaeological fragments mentioned earlier the scribes used the letters “IS” wherever Jesus Christ now appears. The inscription “Isu Chrestos” can still be seen on the oldest surviving Christian “Synagogue” in Syria.

The next difference is that Isu Chrestos was a ghost. The first three chapters of Luke where “Jesus” was born are missing. When you think about it they are missing in two of the synoptic Gospels too. There were no Gospels of Luke, Mark, Matthew or John in the second century. There was only “Euangelion” – the “Good News” of Marcion’s single Gospel. (Marcion at marcion.info)

“Their number and influence seem always to have been less in the West than in the East, and in the West they soon died out. Epiphanius, however, testifies that in the East in A.D. 374 they had deceived “a vast number of men” and were found, “not only in Rome and Italy but in Egypt, Palestine, Arabia, Syria, Cyprus and the Thebaid and even in Persia”. And Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus in the Province of the Euphrates from 423 to 458, in his letter to Domno, the Patriarch of Antioch, refers with just pride to having converted one thousand Marcionites in his scattered diocese. Not far from Theodoret’s diocese, near Damascus, an inscription was found of a Marcionite church, showing that in A.D. 318-319 Marcionites possessed freedom of worship (Philippe Le Bas and William Henry Waddington, Greek Inscriptions grecques et latines recueillies en Grèce et en Asie Mineure (1870), volume 3, inscription 2558.).

G.R.S. Mead: An Introduction to Marcion:

This much we know, that the views of Marcion spread rapidly over the “whole world,” to use the usual Patristic phrase for the Graeco- Roman dominions; and as late as the fifth century we hear of Theodoret converting more than a thousand Marcionites. In Italy, Egypt, Palestine, Arabia, Syria, Asia Minor and Persia, Marcionite churches sprang up, splendidly organised, with their own bishops and the rest of the ecclesiastical discipline, with a cult and service of the same nature as those of what subsequently became the Catholic Church.

The Marcionites were the most rigid of ascetics, abstaining from marriage, flesh and wine, the latter being excluded from their Eucharist. They also rejoiced beyond all other sects in the number of their martyrs. The Marcionites have also given us the most ancient dated Christian inscription. It was discovered over the doorway of a house in a Syrian village, and formerly marked the site of a Marcionite meeting-house or church, which curiously enough was called a synagogue. The date is October 1, A.D. 318 and the most remarkable point about it is that the church was dedicated to “The Lord and Saviour Jesus, the Good – “Chrestos”, not Christos. In early times there seems to have been much confusion between the two titles. Christos is the Greek for the Hebrew Messiah, Anointed, and was the title used by those who believed that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. This was denied, not only by the Marcionites, but also by many of their Gnostic predecessors and successors. The title Chrestos was used of one perfected, the holy one, the saint; no doubt in later days the orthodox, who subsequently had the sole editing of the texts, in pure ignorance changed Chrestos into Christos wherever it occurred; so that instead of finding the promise of perfection in the religious history of all the nations, they limited it to the Jewish tradition alone, and struck a fatal blow at the universality of history and doctrine. There was naturally a number of sub-schools of the Marcion school, and in its ranks were a number of distinguished teachers …
(G.R.S. Mead, Fragments of a Faith Forgotten (London and Benares, 1900; 3rd Edition 1931), pp.241- 249)

The synagogues of Chrest:

“Incontestably the most interesting example is that the Marcionites could call their buildings for worship synagogues cf. the inscription found in Deir Ali (Lebaba) south-east of Damascus [which records a building as a Synagogue of the Marcionites," Kittel’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament.

The Greek 'Acts of Philip' (Acta Philippi) uses the word "synagogue" several times to refer to the building where Gnostic people worshipped. The Acts of Philip is most completely represented by a text discovered in 1974 by François Bovon and Bertrand Bouvier in the library of Xenophontos monastery on Mount Athos in Greece. The manuscript dates from the fourteenth century, with language identifying it as a copy of a fourth century original and it describes a community that practised vegetarianism and celibacy, in which women wore men's clothing and held positions of authority comparable to men, serving as priests and deacons. The community used a form of the eucharist where vegetables and water were consumed in place of bread and wine. Among lesser miraculous accomplishments of the group were the conversion of a talking leopard and a talking goat, as well as the slaying of a dragon.

Manichaeism

Manichaeism thrived between the third and seventh centuries, and at its height was one of the most widespread religions in the world.

Right: Epistles of Mani. Amongst the most important of the manichaean texts found at Kellis are substantial parts from the Epistles of mani, which are now in the process of being translated. The Kellis material preserves fragments of various sizes, here is illustrated one of the largest which comprises a bifolium.

Manichaean churches and scriptures existed as far east as China and as far west as the Roman Empire. Although most of the original writings of the founding prophet Mani (c. 216–276 CE) have been lost, numerous translations and fragmentary texts have survived. Its beliefs are a synthesis of Christianity, Zoroastrianism and Buddhism and as the spread and success of Manichaeism were seen as a threat to other religions, so it was widely persecuted in Christian, Zoroastrian, Islamic, and Buddhist cultures. St. Augustine was once a Manichaean.

...the Manichaeans in their missionary endeavour in the Roman Empire drew upon the Marcionite critique of the Old Testament and the Jewish God, even though in contrast to Marcionism the Manichaean demiurge is good. Again, following Marcion, Mani believed that he had been called to restore the true teaching of Jesus. This had been corrupted and falsely interpreted by Judaisers, against whom Paul had preached, as evidenced by a particular reading of the Pauline epistles. Thus it lay upon Mani to establish a firm canon of scripture that could never again be adulterated.

Mani and the lirst generation of his church believed that they were living in the last days before the retum of Jesus as judge. (Manichaean texts from the Roman Empire by Iain Gardner, Samuel N. C. Lieu, Cambridge University Press, 2004)

I, Mani, the Apostle of Jesus the Friend, in the love of the Father...
- M 17 (Turfan)

A canonical epistle by Mani, from a Coptic papyrus codex at Kellis:

The form 'Chrestos', that is "Jesus the Good," is found throughout the text. (Emerging from darkness: studies in the recovery of Manichaean sources By Paul Allan Mirecki, Jason BeDuhn, Volume 43 of Nag Hammadi and Manichaean studies, BRILL, 1997)

Alexander of Lycopolis (flourished early in the fourth century) notes that the Manichaeans used the form 'Chrestos'. He was the writer of a short treatise, in twenty-six chapters, Against the Manicheans (J. P. Migne, Patrologia Graeca, XVIII, 409-448). He wrote:

These things are the principle of what they say and think. And they honor very especially the sun and moon, not as gods, but as the way by which it is possible to attain unto God. (Of the Manichaeans By Alexander of Lycopolis)

Articles

Content: Introduction Catalogue of Chrest archaeology Jesus Christ makes his appearance Indian symbolism and the ‘nomina sacra’ The Isu Chrestos of Marcion Manichaeism