(e)R. A. LipsiuB urges the silence of St. Paul's Epistles, and Indeed of the whole body of the earliest Christian literuture. He retfards the Asiatic ori^rin of the name as probable, but is Dot inclined to dat« It earlier than tbs last decade of the Ist cent. But e\en if we set t^side, as he does, the evidence of Acts and 1 Peter, this silence explains itself from the fact that the name arose in non-Cbristian circles, and was for soms time conflnsd to them.
II. By tchom tixu the name invented? — Here we are left without direct eviilence. The xS"ll">-^^<"'^^ (EV 'were OAlIed ') of Ac ll*" mii^ht be used in- differently of a name adopted by oneself, or given by other» (see Thayer, j.VT Lex. $.v.). But there are certain hints which furnish some clues.
(a) The Christians do not seem to have used it of themselves, at any rate vt-ithin the apostolic period. They cnllcd themselves 'the bretlnim ' (0' i^f^0o'^i Ac 14' l5", Ko 16'* etc.), 'the disciple-s ' (ol naetrral, Ac 11" 13" 2(fi°), 'the saints' (oi 57^01, Ro 16", 1 Co 16', Eph 1" etc.), 'the faithful' (ol ir«rTo(, Ac lO", I Ti 4»-"), 'the elect' (ol iKXeicrol, Mt 24", Mk 13", 2 Ti '2'», 1 P 1'), 'the way ' (i 6S6s, Ac »• 199." 24'-°), but never 'Christians.' In the only passage in whicli this is apparently not true (I P 4"), ' as a Christian ' is parallel with ' as a thief,' 'as a murderer,' which shows that the writer is speaking for the moment from the point of view of the heathen persecutor. St. Paul (Ac 26*) seems even to avoid using the n.anie 'Chri.stian,' which Agrippa had employed, and to substitute for it tlie periphrasis toioOtoj ^Troros koI iyii el^i. It is not probable, then, that we must look to Chris- tians themselves for the invention of tliis title.
(6) Nor is it much more probiible that the Jews invented it. The onlj- direct nanu' by which they call the Christians in NT is that of Xaj-wparoi, ' Nazarenes' (Ac 24*). Elsewhere they speak of them as^ atptait *th-ri, 'this sect' {ih. 28'-"''; cf. 24"). On one occa- sion, indeed, we find the word in the mouth of the Jewish king Agrippa (Ac 26**). But Agriripa ha<l spent a great part of his life in Rom. circles, and wna speaking on this occa-sion at Ca'sarea liefore a Rom. audience. It is too much then to infer from this passage that the word ' Christian ' wa» in use among the Jews. On the other hand, there is a strong <t priori improbability that the Jews, even in irony, would call the new sect ' followers of the Messiah, the Anointed One ' (i
XpiffTil).
(r) More probably it is to the heathen populace of Antioch that we must look for the origin of the Dame. It wa.s amongst the ^lopulace ('vulgus.'in iof. cit.) that Tacitus' attention was drawn to the word in Rome. It was (next to the Jews) the heathen populace whose notice was iirst attracted VOL. I. — ••c
by the Christians. And their notice was attracted to them as the preachers of one Christos. This name was always on their lips. It was the name in which they were baptized (.-Vc 2" 8" 10", Ja 2' *). It i« not surprising, then, that tlie Antiocbenes, hearing that this Christos had been alive not more than fifteen years before, should call his followers the Xpimafoi. vVe must, however, leave room for the possibility that the word may have originated in the Latin-speaking suite of the leqatus, i.e. in the official class, though not necessarily as an official name. Though we hear of nothing which would bring the Christians prominently before this class in Antioch, as happened in other towns, yet, in our complete ignorance of the relations between the Christians and tliis official class in Antioch at the time, this might easily be the case without our knowing anything of it.
III. Early .fpread of the name. — We must be on our guard against overestimating the attention which the Christian body attracted in Antioch at the time when the name was invented. The i-xXot iKavit, 'much people,' of Ac 11* might be almost unnoticeable in so large a metropolis as Antioch, and the arrival of another new teaching would easily escape observation in a great centre of thought, where all the religions of the world jostled with one another. St. Luke, writing at a time when the name had become famous, assigns to its origin an imjxirtance reflected from its later history. He is writing also from within the Christian circle, to which the name woulil be familiar long before its application became general. But though confined, it may be, in its beginnings to that quarter of the city where the Cliristians had settled, it must have spread very quickly be3-ond Antioch to all parte of the empire whither Christianity had made its way. Less than twenty years after its birth we hear it mentioned in the Rom. official circle at Caesarea as a familiar word, whoso signification was too well known for it to need introduction or explanation (Ac 20*). A year or two later it is in common use among the popu- lace of Rome (Tac. loc. cit.), and not far from the same date St. Luke indirectly implies that the name has become famous (U^). St Peter, writing probably between 64-67 from Rome to the Christian communities in Asia Minor (I P 5'^ 1'), a.ssumes that it is quite well known over all that district (ih. 4"). From the correspondence between the younger Pliny and the emperor Trajan in 112-113 we find that it is by that time equally familiar to members of the olficial bodies in llorae and Bithynia. Finally, in the Ignatian Epn., written in the first or at the lieg. of the second decade of the 2nd cent., we find for the first time that the Chris- tians have accepted the name and use it atiiongsl themselves {e.q. Eph. 11", Rum. 3, I'ulmyirp 7).