Greetings
again dear reader:
A few days
ago I saw a post in Facebook posing a question.
However, I can’t remember exactly where so decided to write on the
subject here and post links in several places hoping my reflections might
help. The question was asked why we find
in the Greek text Jesus called Jesus Christ in some places and Christ Jesus in
others? After reflecting on the question
some while other things were going on I finally figured out how I wanted to
address it. The answer is really kind of
simple, but the explanation not so for the layman in linguistics. So please let me lay a little ground work as
simply as I can.
Humans are
such a diverse collection of tribes in every sense of the word. Through the millennia since our creation we’ve
tried about every way to live possible, and out speech is no exception. Of course students know the story of hos our
languages became so diverse in the first place.
After the flood of Noah’s day some men succeeded in concentrating most
of the early population in Mesopotamia and tried to challenge God. Their first attempt to frustrate his plans
were brought to an end when he went down to where they were and scrambled the
people into many languages, the Bible hints at around 70 were created. The story is found at Genesis chapter eleven.
Those who
study languages, of which there are now thousands, find an astonishing number
of ways to express meaning in human languages.
But the two most common ways, which to some extent can be found in
almost every language on earth either singly or together are word position in a sentence and word inflection. The first
is self-explanatory; words derive their function from their position in a
sentence. The second, inflexion, is the method whereby words
derive their function from adding endings, prefixes or both to a root, or foundational word.
English combines
both methods. I see Jane. Is a simple sentence in English where the first word is
the subject, the second the verb, indicating action, and the object, indicating
the recipient of the action. We
instinctively know the function of each word from it’s position. But look at word two in the same sentence, see.
The meaning of the sentence would change completely if we changed it to saw or have seen. Notice the word
itself has three different forms. That is
an example of inflection.
For hundreds
of years students have learned the Latin sentence “pullae poeta amant.” The
means “the girls love the poet.” Now in
Latin the word order is almost irrelevant.
We can write that in any of the nine ways it can be written as far as
word order goes and it still means the same thing. That is because words in Latin primarily
derive their function, or relationship to each other from the ending of the
word. True, Latin does have a customary
word order which was habitual, and the example is in that word order, but that
is almost unimportant, more on that in a minute.
Greek, like
Latin, is what linguists call a highly
inflected language. That means that
function mostly derives from form. Take
the definite article, or the word the
in English, in Greek it has twenty two forms to wit:
Ο, η, το
Του, της, του
Τω, τη, τα
Τον, την
Οι, αι, τα
Των, των, των
Τοις, ταις, τοις
Τους, τας
Although
some forms appear to repeat they are considered different, yet all mean the in English. Verbs, pronouns, nouns, and other classes of
words have their own set of endings and these are the prime determinants of
relationship and subtlety of meaning for Greek words just like Latin. It is easily possible to mix up word order
and still get the same meaning. Often
dialects of Greek primarily differentiate themselves by subtle differences in
the word order the particular Greek population used. For instance Koine speakers often used
Semitic word order simply because their primary language was another, like
Aramaic. That’s much like English speakers
today reversing the proper order of Spanish nouns and Adjectives, which in Spanish
are in the reverse of English when speaking in Spanish.
Now that we’ve
laid the foundation we can move onto the likely answer to the question, which
is kind of simple. Remember the Latin sentence
from earlier? While there was a word
order which were “normal” changes in word order were used to subtly lay
emphasis. The general rule in that and
Greek is that of any two words, sometimes more, the one on the left had more
emphasis than the one on the right. We
can illustrate that in English with the phrase in question. In the case of Jesus Christ the name, Jesus,
or who he is carries the emphasis and
the two words are often thought of and used as his name.
However when
we reverse the order, placing the modifier first, Christ Jesus, it is the title, what
he is which is emphasized. The stress is
laid on the fact he is the Christ or Messiah.
It is a subtle way to indicate meaning for us which those other than we
writers often aren’t conscious of but it’s there all the same.
So it is
with ancient Greek. Normally a modifier
of a word will come after it, like in Spanish.
Thus a black wall becomes in
Greek a wall black. However, if an ancient Greek wanted to emphasize
the wall being black he could reverse the word order and his readers would know
that he was talking about a black
wall. So word order had its role in ancient Greek.
In the case
of the phrase we’re talking about the order in Greek which Christ follows Jesus
is treated much like a name in English and has roughly the same meaning as the
Greek through usage that way. And
reversing it has the same effect in English as the Greek. This is a case of the rule being the exception
in English. Because of that translators
render the two words together as they appear in the Greek as a rule. I won’t get into exceptions here as there is
at least one I can think of which involves the presence or lack of the definite
article.
I hope this
little tour through linguistics and Greek grammar was helpful for those who wonder
about that topic.
