CHRISTIAN. - Name of the followers of Jesus. Acts 11:26 relates: "And it came to pass for them (Paul and Barnabas)... that it was first in Antioch that the disciples received the name of C." This manner of speaking suggests that the believers did not adopt this name for themselves, but that it was given to them by others. Indeed, throughout the New Testament they call one another by other names ("faithful," "elect," "saints," etc.) but never by this one; nor does it ever appear in the Jewish sources (they call them "Galileans," "Nazarenes," "minim," etc.); it remains, therefore, that it was the pagans, and the ignorance of the pagan is revealed also in having chosen as the basis of the designation not a proper name, but an indeterminate adjective. Since Christ means "anointed" or "messiah," C. meant the believer in any Christ whatsoever (and there were many such) and not properly in Jesus.
The author of Acts places the origin of the name in Antioch around the year 43, and certainly Luke, being himself a native of Antioch, could have been a witness to the fact. But rationalist criticism believes that Luke's phrase means historically nothing other than the differentiation at that time and in that place of a Christian community from the Jewish one, and not at all the appearance of a new name. For them the followers of Jesus must then have been called universally by other names ("Nazoreans," "Galileans," "poor"); the name "C." would appear only with 1 Pt. 4:16, more than fifty years later.
But this assertion that the faithful only around the year 100 began to be distinguished from the Jews in the mouths of the pagans, and therefore only then could receive from them a proper name, is unhistorical, because the Acts already reports the name "C." as current in Rome in the year 64; it is found in the preaching of Peter and in the Didache, and Pliny and St. Ignatius give it as common in Antioch and in Bithynia at the beginning of the 2nd century, not to mention the famous graffito of Pompeii, where it is difficult not to see the name in question. And moreover it is not true that those general designations of the faithful existed throughout the 1st century, and still less that 1 Pt. (v. PIETRO APOSTOLO) was written so late; besides, in it the name "C." appears as already current even in Asia Minor. Rather, the ending "-ian," which is purely Latin, would seem to argue against the Antiochene origin, whence some supposed that the name was born in Rome or at least was given in Antioch to the faithful by the Roman authorities themselves. This is not necessary, because the use of that ending had spread greatly in the East with the Romans, and just as the names "Asians," "Herodians," "Pompeians," "Caesarians," etc. were current there, so too, by analogy, even the natives who spoke Greek could well have created the form "C."
Its meaning was therefore followers of Christ or propagandists of messianism, and from the beginning it had a pejorative sense. The pejorative sense seems to shine through in Acts 11:26; 26:28 and 1 Pt. 4:16, and is often deplored by the apologists, and it must have derived not only from the poor esteem in which the faithful were held, but also from the very nature of the name, for a reason now difficult to grasp.
Perhaps the common people saw at the root of the name χριστιανός the adjective χρηστός, which with the sense of "good" also had that of "simpleton"; and it is a fact that at Rome at least the followers of Jesus were from the year 64 called by the common people Chrestians (Tacitus, Annales, XV, 44: "quos per flagitia invisos vulgus Chrestianos appellabat"; cf. also the "impulsore Chresto" of Suetonius (Claudius, 25), in which many see the name of Christ transfigured, and "cretin," which is a Romance derivative of "christianus"). Indeed some even assert that the primitive form of the name must have been Crestianus, appealing also to the fact that in the three cited passages of the New Testament there must originally have been written not χριστιανοί, but χρηστιανοί, as is often found also in the most ancient Christian inscriptions. But this is a very common phenomenon of interchange of two identical sounds (η = i, itacism already common at the time), and nothing proves that for three centuries the pagans did not know what the true name of Christ was and that the C. themselves were unaware of having been so called from a Χριστός and not from a Χρήστος.
Bibliography5 works
Antonio Ferrua
St. Ignatius of Antioch uses the title χριστιανός 5 times, from which the name χριστιανισμός was formed (3 times); the Martyrdom of Polycarp (ca. 160) has χριστιανός 3 times, χριστιανισμός 1 time. The apologists give apologetic explanations of χριστιανός (as if it were χρηστιανός "beneficent," from χρηστός). From the apologetic interpretation of the name "C." the Marcionites drew a tendentious explanation of the name: they defined themselves as "chrestians," as adherents of the good god (chrestos) in contrast with the orthodox who called themselves Nazoreans in Syria and proved to be adherents of a Jewish messianism, connected with a locality of Israel (Nazareth); the great Persian inscription of Kartir distinguishes Nazoreans and C., qualifying the Marcionites with the latter name.