N.T. Wright is one of the top New Testament scholars in the world. Currently he is a professor at the University of St Andrews, having just retired as Bishop of Durham. Wright is controversial. Some people love his writing; others are deeply suspicious. His meticulous research on resurrection in the Greco-Roman world and in Judaism has debunked attempts to deny the reality of the bodily resurrection of Jesus. His views on Paul and on justification worry many conservative theologians. to disI have learned much from his books. I don’t agree with everything he says but he writes well and forces me to think.
Lately I have been reading Colossians. Each day I read a different translation. Yesterday I read Wright’s translation in the “New Testament for Everyone.” I was intrigued with his use of “king” for “Christ” (Christos in Greek). BDAG (the standard Greek lexicon for New Testament scholarship) defines Christ as “fulfiller of Israelite expectation of a deliverer, the Anointed One, the Messiah, the Christ” or “the personal name ascribed to Jesus.” I understand how Wright translated Christ as King. For many Christians, though, the rich word "Christ" has no content. Some people take Christ to be Jesus’ last name. The use of the word Christ does not move Bible readers toward the content of what the title actually means.
By translating Christos as King, Wright seeks to give word its proper meaning and content. But, in my understanding of the title “Christ,” king is only part of the definition. It means more. The “Christ” is the Anointed One who perfectly fulfills the roles of a prophet, priest, and a king.
So I emailed Prof. Wright yesterday. I asked: what do you do with the offices/functions of the prophet and priest in translating Christos as Messiah? Christ means King but doesn’t the title mean more than king, that is, the perfect and complete prophet and priest and king?
To my surprise, he replied within an hour. Here is his response (in the following two paragraphs):
In this case let me refer you to the discussion of Christos as 'Messiah' in Paul, in Paul and the Faithfulness of God pp 815-36 (the following section is also important but that's the main discussion). See also the article on 'Messiahship in Galatians' in my Pauline Perspectives. The point is that for Paul -- and I take Colossians to be by Paul -- the word Christos regularly and demonstrably carries royal meanings, as its use in connection with various royal psalms like Psalms 2, 89, 110 makes clear. And this in turn means that when Paul opens and closes the theological argument of Romans with explicit Davidic themes (1.3f.,15.12f.), alluding to royal prophecies, we should read these as what they are, rather than flattening them out into the generalized proper name which has been (as you say) the norm for so long (due to a de-Judaizing of the NT in western Christianity, which is itself due to various factors too numerous to list or discuss here).
Your question -- which is parallel to some I've been asked by theologians here at St Andrews this last term -- then relates to the much later dogmatic tendency to think in terms of the 'threefold office' of prophet, priest and king. That was always a much later systematic way of trying to draw out the significance of Christos (based on the fact that prophets and priests were also, sometimes at least, 'anointed'); and, to be sure, the New Testament (NT) does present Jesus as a prophet (frequently in the gospels) and as a priest (obviously in Hebrews but by implication elsewhere too). But it seems clear to me that the NT also uses Christos in a way which does not include either of these (e.g. Mark 8 where the disciples say that some people say Jesus is a prophet, but Peter then says 'You are the Christos' -- compare the High Priest's question in Mk 14). Thus, though the NT does see Jesus as both prophet and priest, and though these are important for any complete Christology, it seems that the NT follows the general rule in second-temple Judaism of using messianic language to indicate royal status and identity rather than prophetic or priestly. Not for the first time, the later dogmatic traditions make it harder, not easier, to read the New Testament, even when they are saying things which are true in themselves. . . but that raises all kinds of other problems . . . !
Lately I have been reading Colossians. Each day I read a different translation. Yesterday I read Wright’s translation in the “New Testament for Everyone.” I was intrigued with his use of “king” for “Christ” (Christos in Greek). BDAG (the standard Greek lexicon for New Testament scholarship) defines Christ as “fulfiller of Israelite expectation of a deliverer, the Anointed One, the Messiah, the Christ” or “the personal name ascribed to Jesus.” I understand how Wright translated Christ as King. For many Christians, though, the rich word "Christ" has no content. Some people take Christ to be Jesus’ last name. The use of the word Christ does not move Bible readers toward the content of what the title actually means.
By translating Christos as King, Wright seeks to give word its proper meaning and content. But, in my understanding of the title “Christ,” king is only part of the definition. It means more. The “Christ” is the Anointed One who perfectly fulfills the roles of a prophet, priest, and a king.
So I emailed Prof. Wright yesterday. I asked: what do you do with the offices/functions of the prophet and priest in translating Christos as Messiah? Christ means King but doesn’t the title mean more than king, that is, the perfect and complete prophet and priest and king?
To my surprise, he replied within an hour. Here is his response (in the following two paragraphs):
In this case let me refer you to the discussion of Christos as 'Messiah' in Paul, in Paul and the Faithfulness of God pp 815-36 (the following section is also important but that's the main discussion). See also the article on 'Messiahship in Galatians' in my Pauline Perspectives. The point is that for Paul -- and I take Colossians to be by Paul -- the word Christos regularly and demonstrably carries royal meanings, as its use in connection with various royal psalms like Psalms 2, 89, 110 makes clear. And this in turn means that when Paul opens and closes the theological argument of Romans with explicit Davidic themes (1.3f.,15.12f.), alluding to royal prophecies, we should read these as what they are, rather than flattening them out into the generalized proper name which has been (as you say) the norm for so long (due to a de-Judaizing of the NT in western Christianity, which is itself due to various factors too numerous to list or discuss here).
Your question -- which is parallel to some I've been asked by theologians here at St Andrews this last term -- then relates to the much later dogmatic tendency to think in terms of the 'threefold office' of prophet, priest and king. That was always a much later systematic way of trying to draw out the significance of Christos (based on the fact that prophets and priests were also, sometimes at least, 'anointed'); and, to be sure, the New Testament (NT) does present Jesus as a prophet (frequently in the gospels) and as a priest (obviously in Hebrews but by implication elsewhere too). But it seems clear to me that the NT also uses Christos in a way which does not include either of these (e.g. Mark 8 where the disciples say that some people say Jesus is a prophet, but Peter then says 'You are the Christos' -- compare the High Priest's question in Mk 14). Thus, though the NT does see Jesus as both prophet and priest, and though these are important for any complete Christology, it seems that the NT follows the general rule in second-temple Judaism of using messianic language to indicate royal status and identity rather than prophetic or priestly. Not for the first time, the later dogmatic traditions make it harder, not easier, to read the New Testament, even when they are saying things which are true in themselves. . . but that raises all kinds of other problems . . . !
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