Christ / Messiah

A modern English Bible isn’t a book written by a single author in a single style with a single theme in a single language. No, it’s a complex translation of writings by dozens of authors in several different languages and in different genres and styles as well as being affected by many quite different societies and cultures over thousands of years!

Just like immigrants who often choose new names, or new spellings or pronunciations of their names when they move into a new culture, Biblical characters often have multiple variations of their names. A New Testament character might have a Hebrew name, a Greek name, and likely even a Latin variant, not to mention nicknames, and shortened forms, etc.

Then we have to distinguish between names and titles. So with Sir Charles Spencer Chaplin (more commonly known as Charlie Chaplin), the Sir part is a title, not part of his actual name. What’s more, over the years, a person’s friends, for example, might start using a title as a name.

So it is with this complex topic. ‘Messiah’ comes from a Hebrew word (מָשִׁיחַ mashiyak) but the word never occurs in the Old Testament (although the concept is often discussed). The root of the word is ‘to anoint’ or in this context, ‘to pour oil over someone to indicate that they have been chosen by God for a special task’. It occurs twice in the New Testament (Greek Μεσσίας Messias, Jn 1:41, 4:25) but in the New Testament the word ‘Christ’ (Greek Χριστός [Ⱪristos]) is most often used.

So in a modern English translation, do we have to use the two words Messiah and Christ with the same meaning but coming from two different languages? The Open English Translation has elected to only use the word messiah since we only want one English word for the concept, and it’s a Hebrew (not a Greek) concept so we base our chosen word on the Hebrew.

But because messiah is sometimes used as a description and sometimes as a title (Christ Jesus or in the OET, Messiah Yeshua), you’ll find both lowercase and uppercase messiah in this translation. So the OET is a Christ-less Bible, but very pleased to promote the concept of the messiah—one chosen long ago by God to save/rescue the world.