The verb χριω (chrio) means to smear or anoint, and is part of the Proto-Indo-European root "gher-", to rub, which also gave us the nouns χρως (chros), skin, and the familiar χρωμα (chroma), color (see below).

The PIE root of these words happens to be identical to another root "gher-", meaning to desire, hence the verb χαιρω (chairo), meaning to rejoice (and thus English words like care, charity and charisma). A third identical PIE root "gher-" has to do with collectivity and enclosures: hence words like carol, choir, chorus, cohort, court and the familiar Latin word hortus, meaning garden. This cluster of roots probably also includes the adverb χωρις (choris), meaning separately or apart, the nouns χορτος (chortos), grass or grassy pasture, and εορτη (eorte), feast, and the verb χαρασσω (charasso), to engrave (hence our English noun character, and possibly also the verb γραφω, grapho, to write).

It's even possible (albeit not often proposed) that all these words stem from some ancient Über-root "gher-", which originated in one of the first words ever spoken, and which expressed one of the most fundamental principles of human thought, namely that of αγιος (agios), or social (i.e. part natural and part artificial) selection of desired qualities and traits, and thus social convergence upon what John the Revelator would dub the New Jerusalem — that is a civilized (i.e. urban, not natural but wholly synthetic) humanity in a state of ελευθερια (eleutheria), freedom-through-law.

Note that the pleasing similarity between the Greek verb χαιρω (chairo), to rejoice, and the noun χειρ (cheir), hand, also exists in Hebrew, namely between the noun יד (yad), hand, and the verb ידה (yada), to praise, hence the name Judah, or Praiser. The equally similar verb ידד (yadad) means to love, hence the name David, meaning Beloved, not unlike the Latin caritas and the English charity (the King James translation of the noun αγαπη, love: agape, 1 Corinthians 13:1).

The Septuagint (the ancient Greek translation of the Old Testament) used our verb χριω (chrio) to describe any kind of smearing, pouring or anointing, ranging from regular armory maintenance (2 Samuel 1:21, Isaiah 21:5) to basic medical routines (Isaiah 1:6).

In Israel, the ritualistic act of anointing was performed to inaugurate people into certain specific offices, and only offices that had no earthly superior and were subject only to God. Thus only a High Priest (Leviticus 4:3) and a prophet and a king would be anointed into office (1 Kings 19:16). Regular priests and certain venerable objects would be consecrated by receiving a mere sprinkling of the oil (Exodus 30:26, Leviticus 8:30).

In Hebrew this verb is משח (mashah). In the New Testament our verb is used only 5 times, see full concordance, but also comes with the following derivations:

The noun χρως (chros) means skin (Acts 19:12 only) and derives from the same Proto-Indo-European root "gher-" as the verb χριω (chrio), to anoint, and thus the noun χριστος (christos), anointed or Christ (see above). From the same root comes the familiar noun χρωμα (chroma), which occurs often as synonym for χρως (chros), skin, but which emphasizes the color of the skin rather than the organ itself or the fact that it encloses the body, not unlike a fence does a pasture.

Note that the Greek word for body, namely σωμα (soma), looks like a derivation of the verb σωζω (sozo), to save. The Greek word for flesh is σαρξ (sarx), hence our English word sarcasm (i.e. taking a bite out of someone's flesh). Quite to the contrary, the Hebrew word for flesh is בשר (basar), which stems from the verb בשר (basar), meaning to bring glad tidings, which is not unlike the Greek verb ευαγγελιζω (euaggelizo), meaning to deliver a good message, hence our English verb to evangelize, which in turn derives from the noun αγγελος (aggelos), messenger, from which comes our English word angel.

All this demonstrates that one of the first ideas our very distant ancestors sought to put to words was that humanity's mind is self-similar to the entire biosphere, and that the emergence of sapiens within the biosphere was self-similar to (i.e. governed by the same principles, and producing the same basic patterns as) the emergence of life within the world of polarized energy (poetically dubbed the "dust of the earth").

When God created Adam, he gathered the dust of the earth into a viable composition and released into that composition the breath of life (Genesis 2:7). And Adam became a living soul: a hyper-complex assembly of chemical processes that was separated from the world of large by Adam's skin. Within Adam's body, the same natural laws applied as outside his body, but the complexity of his body was such that it formed a region of spacetime that was quite unlike regular spacetime at large.

This is a difficult idea, but imagine two identical objects, one white and one black, and the sun shines on both objects. The white object will reflect most of the light, whereas the black one will absorb most of it. The white object will stay cool but the black object will warm up. The blacker the object, the warmer it gets, and that is because the separate molecules that make up the black object absorb the light and use it for their own private motions. That causes the molecules to act like exited dogs in a pen, and every bounce between them causes the heat we measure.

Now imagine that the black molecules somehow find a way to no longer utilize any absorbed energy for their own jumping and jolting, but rather engage with the other molecules in a kind of super-cooperation that allows all absorbed energy to be converted into a chemical equivalent that can be stored, retrieved and re-used at will. Now the black object can absorb energy without getting warmer, which is a thermodynamic paradox. It would mean that the black object is now blacker than perfectly black: trans-black or transfinitively black. And that is precisely what defines life.

A living plant cell is able to absorb sunlight and convert it into a chemical compound (nectar, oil), which means that it absorbs energy without getting warmer or burning up (Exodus 3:3). A human mind does precisely the same thing, by converting observations into words and storing these words within a memory (and eventually written text; see our article on YHWH) for later use (Psalm 16:10). That means that stellar black holes, living cells, and sapient human minds are basically the same thing. They emerge for the same reasons, via natural causes, and operate according to the same general principles. This is called self-similarity and that is a quality of fractals. For more on fractals, see our article on αστηρ (aster), meaning star.

God formed Adam's body from the dust of the earth and released into it the breath of life, and Adam became a living soul. Much later, God promised Abraham that his descendants would be like the dust of the earth (Genesis 13:16, as well as like the stars in the sky: 15:5). Later still, Paul explained that those who are of faith are sons of Abraham (Galatians 2:7). Like before, God took that Abrahamic dust of the earth, gathered it into a vital composition, released his Spirit into it (Acts 2:4), and the Church became a new creature, wholly alive within a world of dead dust (Ephesians 2:1).

Jesus was the first-born of a much larger body (see our article on the name Stephen for a look at the similarity between the passion of the Christ and the mammalian reproductive cycle), or said differently: Jesus was the zygote of a whole new being, a being whose Body consists of a multitude of cells that nobody can count, but which are all based on the same genetic constitution that the first-born was, namely the Word of God. Everybody who partakes in the anointing (1 John 2:20) is an anointed and thus a Christ (not a Christian, a Christ).

And just like every complex body consists of transparent eye-cells, contracting muscle cells, policing white blood cells, electricity conducting nerve cells, remembering brain cells, even acid producing stomach cells and feces processing bowel cells (who in turn host vast colonies of alien creatures such as bacteria and fungi), so comprises the body of Christ (the tribe of anointed ones) vastly differing leanings, passions, convictions, applications, interests and so on. And the only thing they have in common is the Word of God, and they all are able to recognize this Word at the core of whatever weirdo shows up, or the lack of it in whatever well-spoken charlatan tries to get in.