Chrestos, not Christos In the early decades, and in most places for the first couple of centuries, when the prophet from Galilee known as Jesus the Nazorean had a title or epithet affixed as a surname, it was not ‘Christos’ but ‘Chrestos’, and the followers of his teachings and those of his disciples were not called ‘Christians’ but ‘Chrestians’. Jesus the Nazorean, or at least his later adherents, may have borrowed more from Serapis than the long hair and beard which replaced the short- haired, clean-shaven look with which he was portrayed as the Good Shepherd, or Kriophoros (‘Sheep-bearer’), also in the image of a Greek deity, or rather deities, Apollo, Hermes, and Orpheus. Admirers of the caring pastoral figure little realize than in firs conception the sheep-bearer was carrying a sacrifice. The image of Serapis dominated until the late fifteenth century when it changed to that of Cesare Borgia, son of Pope Alexander VI. Jesus as Chrestos rather than Christos There is every reason to suspect that in the beginning, Jesus was usually surnamed Chrestos rather than Christos, and that disciples of the many variants of the religion founded in his name were much more often called Chrestianoi rather than Christianoi. Evidence from several sources demonstrates that outsiders and even some insiders (such as, for example, Clement of Alexandria) in the first few centuries of the Common Era used the terms Chrestos (Χρηστός) and Christos (Χριστός) interchangeably, or else used Chrestos and Chrestianoi exclusively. The word ‘Chrestos’ literally means ‘good’, and depending on the context can mean ‘the good’ or ‘good one’, or simply ‘good’ as an adjective, even, in certain contexts, ‘righteous one’ (one of the appellations of the Messiah in 1 Enoch). The feminine form is ‘Chreste’. The appellation ‘Christos’, on the other hand, is a literal translation of the Hebrew ‘Messiah’, meaning ‘Anointed’, but was never used as a title prior to the translation of the Septuagint. Two more Greek words closely resemble those two: ‘chrestes’ means a prophet or soothsayer, or one who explains oracles, while ‘christes’ simply means white-washer. Neither of these were ever used for Jesus the Nazorean that we know of, however.