ὁ διδασκαλος here...
Since last Sunday, I’ve been doing a bit of thinking about proper names. Because of both the Why Learn Greek illustration and one of the practical exercises, we discussed the different transliteration/translation paths of proper names—from Hebrew to Greek, Hebrew to English, Greek to English, etc. After some reflection, I thought I should clarify things a bit…
Regardless of the fact that three pairs of names, Joshua & Jesus, Judah & Judas, Jacob & James, are translations of three single Jewish names (Yehoshua, Yehudah, Yahkov respectively), today each of the six is a legitimate and distinct name. Joshua, Judah and Jacob are direct English transliterations of the Hebrew names; whereas Jesus, Judas and James are English transliterations from the Greek transliterations of the Hebrew names.
First century Greeks only had one Hellenised version of the Hebrew names, but modern Greeks use two just like we do. For example, in Greece today, James is Ἰακωβος; Jacob is Ἰακωβ.
If there was any confusion out there, I hope that cleared it up.
God bless, Ιακωβος
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment