Annals 15.44 referred to Chrestians; and that is well testified.
Or if not, it is a forgery or interpolation. As if a fifteenth century Christian fabricator would insert "Chrestus" and not "Christus" into a falsification!
There were many other references to Chrestus in antiquity; it is more than a rendition. Chrestus has a different etymology to Christos.
Yes, as a personal name it has been found about two hundred times in first century Roman inscriptions, on tombstones and the like. What that has to do with the argument isn't clear to me. As a name it would have been familiar to Suetonius.
I am now going to start a serious examination of the Hadrian-Servianus letter which is bandied about in various forms. We will need to look closely at the text, and I appeal to any classical scholars here for help.
Here is how a contributor to wiki renders, and comments on, the text. I am going to state that the context and subject matter - fickleness of Egyptian thought -
absolutely demands the reading it receives in this source. Here, by contrast, is your version.
Egypt that you have commanded to me, my dearest Servianus, I have found to be wholly fickle and inconsistent, and continually wafted about by every breath of flame. The worshippers of G-d Serapis are called Christians, and those who are devoted to G-d Serapis call themselves Bishops of Christ.
I have very serious problems with that.
What feature of the original, of which you quote a translation, incites you to use the expression "G-d"?
Why do you stop at that point? Did your source do so? We are left with the impression that Christ and Serapis are the same object of worship, and worshippers of Christ and Serapis are the same people. Does the letter, when read more fully, justify that inference?
Let us now read the wiki version. My bold.
From Hadrian Augustus to Servianus the consul, greeting. The land of Egypt, the praises of which you have been recounting to me, my dear Servianus, I have found to be wholly light-minded, unstable, and blown about by every breath of rumour. There those who worship Serapis are, in fact, Christians, and those who call themselves bishops of Christ are, in fact, devotees of Serapis There is no chief of the Jewish synagogue, no Samaritan, no Christian presbyter, who is not an astrologer, a soothsayer, or an anointer. Even the Patriarch himself, when he comes to Egypt, is forced by some to worship Serapis, by others to worship Christ. [The letter continues on to non-religious matters.]
The bolded sentence makes clear that S and C are regarded as separate beings, and that H is deriding the inconstancy of the Egyptians in switching from one to another. That is exactly what H says he is talking about, of course. This is followed by the comments I now quote.
It seems fairly clear to me that the letter's claim is that the Egyptians were involved in practices inconsistent with the religions they claimed; "Serapis-worshippers" worshipping Christ, "bishops of Christ" worshipping Serapis, and "Jews", "Samaritans" and "Christians" involved in astrology, etc. Note that the author of the History is using the letter as evidence for his claims about the character of Egyptians. However, the article has been citing the letter in connection with the following statement: "Followers of Serapis were called Christians as demonstrated in a letter from Emperor Hadrian to Servianus, 134. (Quoted by Giles, ii p86)" I interpreted this as meaning that worship of Serapis was sufficient for someone to be called a "Christian" (rather than merely that some people called themselves Christians and also worshipped Serapis).
Further problems with this statement were (a) that it assumed the authenticity of the letter's ascription to Hadrian, although the Historia Augusta is regarded as containing many forged sources (see its entry); and (b) that it contained an incomplete citation. I've left the quotation in the article this time, citing an online translation for it, but I've edited the introductory sentence, as it seems to me that this was problematic ... EALacey15:06, 27 August 2006 (UTC)
If any of this is true, than the Serapis = Jesus identification much touted by the Mythicists is based on a plain mistreating of a fragment of the text, and the concealment of another part of it. More: the subject of that section of the letter is precisely that Egyptians, whatever their professed religion, switch from one object of worship
to a different one, which completely invalidates the mythicists' use of this source.
May I have comments on this from you, or from any reader who feels able to cast more light on it?
ETA tsig, I see you got there first with the observation about "G-d".
