The title that became a name. Its root is a verb about smearing medicated salve.
Documented
The lexical chain is documented
Greek chrio, to anoint or smear, produces chrisma, the ointment, and christos, the anointed one, chosen by the Septuagint to render Hebrew mashiah, messiah. Anointing oil in the ancient world was compounded medicine as much as ritual: the Exodus recipe is a formula of myrrh, cinnamon, calamus, cassia, and olive oil. Liddell-Scott's lexicon carries the medicinal senses of the chrio family plainly.
Assessment: Fully documented. The salve etymology is not fringe; it is in the standard lexica. What is contested is what to make of it.
Stories
The king was anointed before the god was
The story the word carries: mashiah first meant the anointed king, Saul and David, marked with oil as set apart. Priests and even the Persian Cyrus received the title. The oil made the office. Only later did the title attach to an expected figure, and last of all to one man's name.
Assessment: Documented across the Hebrew Bible. The title's career, from court ritual to cosmic office to surname, is the ordinary miracle of how words get promoted.
Interesting claims
The drug-smearer reading
Hillman's viral claim: christos signals a function, the one who smears the medicated salve, and early Christianity was a pharmacy cult whose anointing oils were active. On this reading the title is a job description, not a name, and the suppression of the salve is the original cover-up.
Assessment: The verb really does carry medicinal smearing; the lexicon concedes that much. The leap is from 'anointing used medicine' to 'anointing was drug dealing.' Every working lexicographer who has weighed in rejects the gloss as used in the New Testament. The honest residue: translation really did soften a pharmacy verb into a stained-glass word, and that softening is documented even if the cult is not.